


help me to say goodbye

by neonheartbeat



Series: Filled Prompts [8]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Phantom of the Opera Fusion, Bullying, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Foster Care, Friendship, Gun Violence, High School, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kissing, Loss of Parent(s), Making Out, Meta, Multi, Music, Musicals, Orphan Rey (Star Wars), Poverty, Rivalry, Slow Build, Theatre, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-23 19:00:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 24,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16164950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neonheartbeat/pseuds/neonheartbeat
Summary: Being an orphaned foster kid hasn't been the best experience Rey could have had in her life, but it gets plenty worse after an unfortunate incident in eighth grade leaves her the target of bullies for three years. At seventeen, she decides to finally listen to her friends, face her fears, and try out for the school musical (even though she'll have to be in the same room as Ben Solo, her worst enemy) instead of just playing flute in the school band. It turns out to be quite a bit more than she'd bargained for (old fears, rivals, and worst of all, emotions) but after all, you never grow unless you step out of your comfort zone--as Ms. Holdo, the drama teacher, is fond of saying.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> From this prompt on tumblr: "Fine arts kids AU where Rey is in band and Kylo/Ben is in theatre, obviously and they are complete snooty rivals until they discover their mutual love for musical the stylings of John Williams Also fun Finn/Rose sneaky practice room/band bus smoochies ******crack alert*******" 
> 
> Disclaimer: I did not attend a real school as a child or high-school aged teenager, so the general details are all cobbled together from quick texts to my husband (who was on drumline!) and my friends S and A, who absolutely insisted Rey play flute and gave me a comprehensive rundown on how high school extracurriculars function. You're all the best, and I love you. I desperately hope I got it at least 80% believable.

"Come _on,_ " said Rose, leaning against their lockers as Rey slammed hers shut. "It's not like it's _Hamilton._ It's _Phantom_. You love _Phantom._ "

Rey hoisted her flute case over her shoulder. "That's great. I'm still not auditioning."

"Is it because of Ben?" Rose trotted alongside her as they pushed their way down the hall together.

"Ding, ding," said Rey sourly, and opened the door for the other girl as they entered the practice room.

"Rey. That was _three years_ ago. Seriously. Are you going to hold that against him for the rest of his life?" Rose tied her hair out of her round, cheery face and picked up her sheet music as they sat down.

"He knocked me into a _garbage can_ ," said Rey. "Everyone called me 'trash picker' for a year. So yeah, I'm not over it, and I never will be."

"I mean, you _did_ tell him he should try out for Cyrano de Bergerac the next time Mrs. Holdo decides to put it on the schedule," Rose pointed out.

"Yeah, _after_ he knocked me into the garbage." Rey fiddled with her mouthpiece, scarlet to her ears at the memory. "Look, it's senior year for him. He's out of here this year, and next year I'll audition for everything. Happy?"

"Ugh," said Rose, rolling her eyes. "Fine."

The door opened and Finn edged in, lugging his tuba. Rose's entire demeanor changed immediately. She sat up straight and pretended to ignore him.

"I don't needle you about _Finn_ ," Rey hissed under her breath, smiling in spite of herself.

"Shh," Rose hissed.

Finn, unaware of the drama unfolding in the room, got to his spot and unpacked his instrument, cleaning out his mouthpiece and settling a reed in it. "Oh, hey, Rose," he said, nodding at her. "Rey. You gonna try out for _Phantom_?"

"Rey is still sore about Ben Solo and that garbage thing, so no," Rose said, pink at the nose. "Are you?"

Finn grinned. "I might. Ms. Holdo said I was a decent baritone last year when we did _Rent_. Maybe I'll go for Raoul. Hon, hon, hon." He wrinkled his nose and stuck out a pinky, and Rose giggled.

Rey withdrew into her own thoughts as she set up her music and Rose and Finn started talking about something else. It wasn't _completely_ the fact that he'd knocked her into the trash can in the cafeteria in front of everyone—it was the fact that she'd been a freshman, insanely shy, terrified of highschool already, and she'd been minding her own business trying to get some pizza: before she knew what was happening, some lanky, black-haired ninth-grader and his posse had rounded the corner and slammed directly into her, sending her backward and crashing into the garbage can. She still remembered the edge digging into her lower back before she toppled in, both her legs sticking out, and the uproarious laughter of the whole cafeteria.

Gwen had yanked her out, looking disgusted. The girl was enormous, with shoulders like a linebacker and short blond hair: a complete lacrosse beast. Rey could almost hear her again: _Jeez, Ren. Watch your step._

The nicknames were stupid as hell. Ren, Phasma, Hux. Who came up with those?

Anyway, that had been before Finn quit athletics and started hanging out with Rey and Rose all the time, and Phasma had never really forgiven him for it—

"Rey, if you could get your head out of the clouds?"

Rey snapped back to attention and clutched her flute guiltily. Ms. Organa was looking at her with a raised eyebrow. "Sorry," she said, and quickly brought her flute up into position.

"Thank you. All right, let's start with warm-ups. Scales, please."

Rey tapped her fingers mechanically through the scale and tried to stop thinking about eighth grade. She had no idea why Ben was so broody and nasty all the time, either—his mother was great. Ms. Organa was heavily invested in her position was a music teacher, and was strict with her kids, but always kind.

"Rey, elbow up. Scale again, please."

Like now, for instance. Rey sighed and sat up straighter, and began to play again.

* * *

 

"Okay, tell me why you're not auditioning for _Phantom_."

Rey groaned and slumped back in her plastic cafeteria seat. "Go _away_ , Poe."

"Come on. You'd kill it. Even if you didn't get the part, you'd kill the audition." Poe yanked a plastic chair out and sat on it backward, draping his arms across the back. His letterman jacket swung out on either side like wings.

"Did Rose put you up to this?"

"She…might have mentioned it." Poe shrugged. "Shit, I'm auditioning. Come along and keep us all company. It'll be fun."

"Look," said Rey, testy. She shoved a chunk of pizza bagel into her mouth and chewed. It was stale and rubbery. "Ben Solo is going to get the part of the Phantom. Everyone knows it. He was Sweeny in _Sweeny_ and Link in _Hairspray_ and Giles Corey in _The Crucible,_ for god's sake. The only reason he didn't get Hamilton was because he can't rap for shit, and you know it."

"And?"

"And, if I have to sit in the same room with that jackass—" She cut herself off and swallowed her bagel bite. "I don't want to do it."

"But you can sing," he half-whispered. "Are we still keeping that a secret?"

"Shut _up_ ," Rey hissed, bright red.

(It had been at a party at Poe's, actually. Rey had gone to use the bathroom, and while she'd been in there, she'd forgotten how thin the doors were at the Dameron house, and begun a rousing and soulful rendition of "Defying Gravity". It had continued all the way until she'd washed her hands in the sink and opened the door to find Poe, Finn, Rose, Mrs. Dameron, and Rose's sister Paige—a massive theatre nut who could dance, too—standing there, mouths open. Rey had shrieked in horror and raced down the stairs, too embarrassed for words.)

"What? You can. Mom says you're a great soprano. I checked the requirements and Christine needs to be able to hit a top E—"

"I am _not_ ," Rey hissed, "trying out for Christine!"

"Okay! Bite my head off, jeez." Poe spread his hands out. "I've known you since third freaking grade. If you don't wanna do something, you're not gonna. That's fine. But you're never gonna _grow_ or _learn_ if you never step out of your comfort zone."

"Dameron! Sit correctly on that chair, young man!"

Poe rolled his eyes at the lunch monitor and swung one leg around back so he was sideways.

Rey grinned in spite of herself. "Is that what your mom says?"

"No, it's what Ms. Holdo says all the time at auditions. You should go." Poe winked and stood up. "Anyway, first round is this afternoon at four. See ya."

Rey watched him saunter off and shoved another pizza bagel into her mouth.

* * *

 

At three-fifty, she was in her usual spot, sitting alone in the practice room playing her flute.

Halfway through her piece, she stopped and lowered her arms, looking at the clock.

_You're never gonna grow or learn if you don't step out of your comfort zone._

She shoved her flute into the case, closed it, and marched out the door, letting it slam shut behind her as she hurried down the hall.

 

* * *

 

Rey slipped into the auditorium and her stomach wrenched slightly at the crowd of kids all sitting in the seats, waiting to be called.

Ms. Holdo, the drama teacher-slash-director of every play and musical they ever had, was standing just below the stage, the lights gleaming off her pink hair. "Attention, listen up! All right. First of all, I expect everyone to treat the auditioning parties with respect. It takes a lot to get on a stage and sing in front of people, and you never learn to grow if you don't step out of your zone. Now. We're separating by vocal range. All sopranos, please—" She frowned and looked up, peering into the back of the auditorium where Rey was standing. "Yes? Come on down to the front, leave your bag by the door."

Rey set her flute down and inched to the front, already hating herself for coming. Someone whispered, " _trash-picker"_ and someone else snickered as she passed. She felt her face burning.

"As I was saying," said Ms. Holdo, glaring into the audience. "All sopranos, altos, and contraltos please head backstage, all tenors and baritones stay put in the seats. We'll"—she squinted at her notes. "—we'll have the young ladies go first, then the men. Only songs from _Phantom,_ please. I don't want to listen to someone rapping about the Declaration of Independence or yodeling about goats. If you didn't bring sheet music or don't know what song you want Mrs. Kanata to play, we'll run you through scales."

Mrs. Kanata, a tiny woman with burnt umber skin and enormous coke-bottle glasses, peered over the top of the stage upright piano and waved, her necklaces jangling. She'd been a fixture at the school for nobody knew how long, and played piano with so much energy that she regularly almost fell off her bench.

Rey shuffled with the other girls backstage, and had just gotten situated behind a ladder when Rose squeezed her hand.

"You came!" she said, beaming.

"Yeah, your trick with Poe worked," said Rey, exasperated. "It's not too late to hurl on stage and get out of this, right?"

"Oh, shut up," said Rose, face glowing. "What are you gonna sing?"

"I don't _know_ ," said Rey, beginning to panic. "I just—came, I decided—I don't know anything about auditioning."

"Just choose one and tell Old Miss Maz when you get up there," said Rose. "I'm doing 'Think Of Me' and I think Paige is doing 'All I Ask Of You'—"

"Silence in the wings, please!" called Ms. Holdo.

Rey clenched her fists under her arms and waited. The first girl caterwauled her way through "Think Of Me". The second tried to perform the ending aria from the same song and her voice cracked on the last note, sending her running off the stage in tears. _Oh god, this is a mess._ Rey took some petty comfort in the fact that maybe, just maybe, she would at least be better than that. Several girls just went with the scales options.

The time passed remarkably quickly, and before she knew it, Rose was on stage performing a fairly decent rendition of 'Think Of Me', then Paige was on doing her piece, and Paige even got some applause from the audience, because Paige was _good,_  a flawless soprano with a clear and beautiful tone,and then it was just her backstage and nobody else and she was walking on, blinded by the spotlight.

"Rey, hello. What are you going to sing for us?"

Rey swallowed and turned toward where she was sure Mrs. Kanata was sitting. "I—'Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again'," she said quickly.

Her gut clenched as Mrs. Kanata shuffled the papers to find the sheet music. It was her favorite song from Phantom, and if she was being honest with herself she very much did identify with the story of a sad orphan being taught in the fine arts. Even though she didn't really remember her parents, the song never failed to make her emotional, and she was suddenly seized by a terrible fear that she would cry on stage. _Oh god no wait I changed my mind—_

Mrs. Kanata started in with the opening bars, and Rey almost choked. "Sorry, can you—start over?" she asked idiotically.

"Sure thing, honey," she said, and counted down audibly for Rey, starting with the opening bars again.

Rey took a deep breath and stared into the light, making sure to start in head voice.

                _You were once my one companion_  
              _You were all that mattered_  
_You were once a friend and father_  
_Then my world was shattered…_

Her voice cracked slightly on "father" but she pushed through it.

                _Wishing you were somehow here again_  
            _Wishing you were somehow near_  
_Sometimes it seemed if I just dreamed_  
_Somehow you would be here…_

Her voice soared into her upper register, and she even pulled off a little vibrato on _here._ She couldn't see anyone at all, just the light, and pretended she was alone in the shower, and not on stage.

                _Wishing I could hear your voice again_  
              _Knowing that I never would_  
                _Dreaming of you won't help me to do_  
_All that you dreamed I could!_

Rey made it all the way through the second verse without breaking. The break let her breathe, the music soared, and she sang:

                _Too many years fighting back tears  
                Why can't the past just die?_

Tears began rolling down her face, but she forced her vocal chords to hold the high note and shift into the key change in the last refrain, and finished the last words as softly as she could, ending on the high notes and letting it fade rather awkwardly.

The music stopped, and Rey wiped her face, the moment gone and all her embarrassment back. "Sorry," she said, like a dumbass. She heard Ms. Holdo say something, but couldn't see a damn thing with the spotlight in her eyes. "What?" she asked.

"I said that was excellent, thank you," said Ms. Holdo. "Careful on your way off the stage."

Rey toed her way off into blessed darkness and Rose tackled her with a hug. "Holy shit, that was great!" she said enthusiastically. "I mean, you could probably use some vocal training, but for a spur of the moment thing—"

"Let's get out of here," Rey said, her hands still shaking. "I don't wanna hear twenty guys all do 'Music of the Night' one after the other."

"Want to sit in the back and wait for Poe and Finn?" Paige opened her backpack. "I have snacks."

"Ooh, snacks," said Rey, and followed them to the back rows.

 

* * *

 

It turned out almost none of the boys sitting in the audience did "Music of the Night" and instead stuck to mostly "All I Ask of You". Finn and Poe, having the time of their lives, did "Primadonna" as a duet, singing at each other in over-the-top accents at the top of their lungs and swanning around the stage.

The girls snorted with chips in their mouth as Ms. Holdo rolled her eyes and chased them off the stage, laughing. "All right, all right," she said, pretending to shake her fist at Poe. "Troublemakers. Who's next?"

Rey narrowed her eyes as someone stood up and made his way toward the stage. Long legs, long arms—he stepped into the light and she felt a jolt go through her.

"Ah, Mr. Solo," said Ms. Holdo. "'Music of the Night', I assume?"

He nodded and Mrs. Kanata began to play. Rey frowned and watched him. He didn't look at ease on the stage: he stood as if he was trying to hide inside his own skin. He'd also hit another growth spurt at some point, and stood at a good six feet three; his ears hidden by his shaggy mop of black hair, his nose too big for his long face. His jeans and his hoodie were black, nondescript and baggy. He looked like a total creep.

And then he opened his mouth and started singing.

"Whoa," said Paige.

 _Whoa is right_ , thought Rey bitterly. Ben had a full, smooth baritone with a full range and hit every note with ease, emoting all the way through every syllable. She didn't really want to hear him singing about the senses abandoning their defenses and being seduced by the night, but his voice was magnetic, and she found herself leaning forward to listen.

He soared into the first chorus, perfect control over the strength of his voice. All the adolescent awkwardness had left his throat and spread into the rest of his body, apparently. Rey vaguely remembered Paige gushing about his talent when they'd done Hamlet last spring (she'd snagged Ophelia and hadn't shut up about it for months) and almost wished she'd made it to a performance.

Before she knew it, the piece was over, and Ms. Holdo was smiling and waving him off the stage. Two more boys got up, looking half-hearted after Ben's performance, and then auditions were finished for the evening.

"All right! Next auditions are tomorrow at ten in the morning, and we'll have the cast list up by Friday. Thank you all for coming!"

Rey didn't realize she was still looking at Ben until he turned and made eye contact with her, and his lip curled in a sneer before he looked away, back toward the stage.

Rey hustled out with Rose and Paige so she didn't have to be in the same room with him for a second longer. Obviously, he'd landed the part, and unless Sarah Brightman was showing up to the second audition, Paige had gotten Christine.

_W_ _hat a jerk. I hope Paige throws him off the stage when they do "No Return" together._


	2. Chapter 2

_"WHAT?"_

The bellow of outrage could be heard all the way from the cafeteria, and the room even quieted for a moment.

Poe blinked. "Uh, what was _that_?"

Rose got out of her seat. "Sounded like Ben. The cast list! It must be up, it's Friday!"

Rey rolled her eyes. "I guess Jackass didn't get the part of the Phantom. He sounds pretty mad."

"You want to come with us to see what the hell's going on?" Paige was already shoving her trash onto her tray.

"It's Friday, and I'm eating decent pizza, so no," said Rey through a bite of pepperoni. "Let me know what the deal is, though."

"Will do. Come on, let's go—"

The four of them headed out, chattering excitedly. Rey sat by herself, feet up and enjoying her pizza very much. _Ben Solo is pissed, and all is right with the world._ She did feel a little guilty at being happy he was mad about something—but hey, small victories.

She was finishing her chocolate milk when the doors to the cafeteria burst open and Ben and his posse walked in. To her horror, they were marching directly for her table.

 _Can I escape?_ she wondered, half panicked. No, the window was too small and high up. Maybe if she threw her tray at him—

Ben sat down. At her table. _Her_ table. He looked as if he was barely holding onto his last shred of sanity. Hux and Phasma sat on either side of him, looking vaguely shocked. Rey blinked, still holding her carton of milk.

_What. What the fuck._

"Congratulations," Ben said tightly, and extended his right hand.

"What," she said flatly.

"Aw, she doesn't know yet," said Hux, half-sneering.

"What?" Rey asked, baffled.

Phasma sighed and leaned forward, her elbows making the table creak. "What Ren _means_ to say," she said, shooting Ben a murderous, icy blue look, "is that he's got the Phantom, _you've_ landed the part of Christine Daae, and he's looking forward to working with you."

Rey barely heard a word after "Christine Daae". " _WHAT_?"

"That's what he said," Hux told her airily. "Who knew the trash-picker could sing?"

Stung and shocked at the same time, Rey felt tears gather in her eyes. She opened her mouth to deliver something stinging, but couldn't make a sound. This was a nightmare. She had to be dreaming. "I have to go," she said, fighting the tears dripping down her face as she jerked out of her seat and snatched up her book bag. The bottom, worn threadbare by years of use and never being replaced, chose that moment to tear wide open, and her books, papers, sheet music for class, and—worst of all—tampons, scattered across the floor with a massive _thwump_.

Hux laughed. "Picked that _bag_ out of the trash for sure," he said derisively. 

Ben clenched his extended hand into a fist and slammed it on the table, making even Phasma jump. "Shut the _fuck up_ ," he said to Hux, furious. The other boy shrank back slightly, paler than normal.

Rey was already on her knees, trying to gather all her stuff up and trying not to cry in front of everyone in the whole school. Hux's joke cut closer to home than she liked to admit. The bag had come from a charity drive at the Niima Children's Home seven years ago, when she was nine, and she had never bought a new one—she couldn't afford to. Shame choked her as she reached for her stuff, frantically shoving it all into a stack.

She wasn't even aware that she was crying or that Ben was kneeling next to her in the pile of papers and books until she saw his fingers snag her sheet music for "Marion's Theme" from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

"John Williams, huh?" he said awkwardly, patting the papers into a stack.

Rey wiped her eyes and tried to compose herself enough to not cry like a baby in front of this asshole. "Yeah. Big fan." She turned her bag to the side and saw the rip, a good foot long through the cheap, thin canvas.

Ben saw it too. "Here. You can use mine."

Rey gaped as he slid his red Jansport backpack off his shoulder and set it down, taking out a Kindle and nothing else before putting her books into it. "I can't take your backpack," she said blankly.

"Sure you can. I use this for all my books, so." He waved the tablet awkwardly and Rey flushed. "It's not like I need it. Keep it."

 _I don't want your charity,_ she wanted to say, but she didn't have any other way to carry her books and really it was only practical. "Thanks," she said.

"See you at rehearsal," he said stiffly, and stood up, leaving Phasma and Hux to hurry after him as he left the cafeteria.

Rey's shock was interrupted by Finn, Poe, Rose, and Paige bursting back in and screaming, "REY!! YOU GOT THE PART!!!"

"Oh, god," she said, realizing exactly what she'd gotten herself into, and slid down onto the floor.

 

* * *

 

When Rey had been younger, her caseworker had suggested she take up a musical instrument. "It's good for you," she had told her scrawny, pinched little charge. "Music is like therapy, and it can bring people together that you would never dream could be friends—and give you opportunities!"

She'd tried violin first, in her third foster family. The older daughter had smashed it against a wall and cried crocodile tears when Rey flew at her in a rage, prompting the parents to drag Rey back to the agency, all blustering indignation, insisting they had no idea why Rey had attacked their precious daughter and demanding the government take her back.

Her fourth family had pulled her out of school, but let her play their upright piano sometimes. After a scathing little sideways comment from an aunt about whether or not they knew if Rey was "carrying anything", that had stopped.

She had settled on flute in her first year of high school, and with encouragement from Ms. Organa and her newfound friends, she had managed to snag a place in the school band. Marching around on the football field was always fun, and she liked the routine.

It didn't even matter that she was now so old nobody would adopt her. She'd give up her dream of having a real family a long time ago. Her friends were kinder than most of her old families, and their parents treated her like their own kids—even Mrs. Tico, who was strict as a ruler on her own daughters, always insisted on sneaking her an extra cup of Chè Chuối after dinner. Mrs. Dameron (who insisted Rey call her Shara) teased her about going to prom with Poe at least every other week, and Poe would roll his eyes heavenward and hiss, "MOOM", then shuffle off to the den, where Rey would help him with chemistry homework.

So Rey did have a family, just a really big one. It was slightly inconvenient, like the time she started her period for the first time at the Damerons and Shara talked her down out of a panic attack in the bathroom while shoving pads under the door and telling her if she washed her hair on her period she would catch a cold "it's what my abuela _always_ said but I don't think it's totally true, so don't panic; you need a Midol, honey?" but it was better than nothing, and way better than foster care. Plus, they were always happy to let her sleep in the guest room or on a sofa. She hated sleeping at the Niima Children's Home.

And they let her play her flute. Rey liked playing. She'd sit in the backyard and play for hours, inventing little airs and melodies, tootling along to her precious sheet music. It was like a door into other worlds. When she played, she was Marion Ravenwood, on a daring adventure with Indiana Jones, or a scientist escaping from dinosaurs, or maybe an elf in a forest.

So that was where Monday morning found her: sitting alone in the practice room at noon instead of eating in the cafeteria, playing the main theme from _E.T._ as Ben Solo walked into the room and stopped dead in his tracks.

Rey ended her note on a squeak and lowered the flute. "What are _you_ doing here?" she asked.

"Rehearsal," he said shortly. "We're meeting in the auditorium. Poe said you might be here."

"Traitor," she muttered, and packed her instrument up. It became clear as she stuffed her music back into her bag that he was going to wait, so she took her sweet time and followed him out into the hall.

"We tried to find your number to get you into the group chat for the play," he said, holding the door open for her.

"I don't have a phone," she informed him.

"You—what?" He sounded like that was the most shocking thing he'd heard all week.

"I said, I don't have a phone." And sure, that wasn't entirely true, it was just the phone she did have was an ancient Nokia from Goodwill, the technological capabilities of which extended to dialing numbers and playing Snake. "If you want to reach me you have to text all my friends and see which one I'm with that particular day. Or send a smoke signal."

"How do you not have a—"

Rey's temper flared. "Oh, wow, right. Let's solve this mystery. How about: I'm a fucking orphan and I can't afford jack shit. Call the detective, we solved the case."

Ben flushed. "I'm sorry," he muttered.

"Do you want the list of what else I don't have?" Rey took longer strides to keep up with him and his stupidly long legs. "A computer. A car. A—an iPod. Do they even still make iPods?"

"No," he said, "they don't."

"Typical. What else. Parents, that's a big one. Clothes that aren't garbage. Uh. A cat. People have cats, right?"

"You have a flute," Ben said, holding the door at the end of the hall open for her.

"Which took me two years to save up for," she informed him. "And was secondhand from the world's strangest thrift store."

They walked in relative silence outside and down the sidewalks to get to the theater. "I've told Hux not to call you names anymore," he said after they reached the shade of the covered walkway.

"Bit too late for that," she said, and steeled herself for the confrontation. "Kinda started in eighth grade when you knocked me into the trash."

"I remember," he said. "And then you launched yourself out and started flinging old milk cartons at me, and said I had a nose like Cyrano de Bergerac."

"I—" Rey hadn't remembered the trash-throwing part. "I said you should try out for Cyrano de Bergerac."

"And that's different how, exactly?" Ben sounded as if he was trying very hard to keep his voice even.

"It—it—" Rey swallowed. "It's not," she admitted.

"I only knocked into you because Phasma pushed me," he said. "Just, you know. For the record. It was an accident."

"Yeah, and I'm still being called trash-picker," she said.

"Right, because nobody ever makes fun of my nose at all," he said darkly.

Huh. She hadn't thought of it that way. "Still?" she asked.

"Yes, still," he said, and gave her a sideways look of disgust. "Look, call it a truce or whatever. We have to work on this stupid musical together, so just—I'll try not to be an asshole, and you don't make fun of the way I look. Deal?"

"Deal," she said, after considering it.

"I would have gotten off fine if people hadn't started googling Cyrano de Bergerac and laughing. How does an eighth-grader even know who Cyrano de Bergerac is?" Ben held the door open for her.

Rey shrugged. "My fifth family had a whole shelf of classics and I'd sneak in and read them."

"Fifth family," he said, as if the concept had never occurred to him. "Sorry. Uh, we’re here."

Rey mumbled something under her breath and slipped under his arm, hurrying away as fast as she could through the lobby and into the auditorium.


	3. Chapter 3

The quick meeting consisted of Ms. Holdo handing out sheet music and lines and the cast and crew being introduced. Rose had landed Meg Giry, and Paige had been cast as Carlotta, so they sat with Rey as Ms. Holdo went over the minor dialogue.

"Ben found you?"

"Yes. Don't send him after me anymore, he's such a _dick_ ," Rey whispered back.

"You're not going to believe who got Raoul," said Rose. "Freaking Hux."

" _No,_ " said Rey in horror.

"Where did our Monsieurs Firmin and Andre go?" Ms. Holdo scanned the room.

"Poe and Finn? They're on their way." Rose waved her phone.

As if on cue, the two boys burst through the doors and raced down to the stage. "Sorry we're late," panted Finn. "Had to escape chemistry."

"Chemistry is why you were cast, so please embrace it instead of escaping it," said Ms. Holdo. "That was a bad joke. Anyway. All right. I would like…let's see. We'll be collaborating with the school band for the music, wardrobe is going to be done by Mrs. Kanata and her home economics class…right. Chorus girls and Carlotta and Christine, please—and…Piangi. Artie?"

A short, plump eleventh-grader in glasses and a blue and white sweater hustled forward. "Here," he said in a high little voice.

"Great. All right. All of you sign this paper stating you can make it to rehearsals, and we're gonna go through blocking the Dress Rehearsal for Hannibal scene for starters."

* * *

 

Artie, it turned out, was a massive technology geek with a great tenor, and only auditioned because his mother had begged him to please, please do something in school other than mess with computers for once. He had a bit of flair for the dramatic, and very much enjoyed parading around with Paige on stage while Rose and Rey pretended to dance ballet in the background with the other chorus girls.

"And—oh, I nearly forgot, we need our Opera Director. Where's our Monsieur Reyer?" Ms. Holdo already looked vaguely frazzled.

"Oh, um, uh, that's me," said a tall, thin senior. He pushed his gold-rimmed glasses up his nose and wiped his hands on his yellow sweater.

"CJ? Yes, that's you. All right, for this scene you're blocked with your back to the audience."

"But what if I back up too far? I could break my neck!"

"CJ," said Ms. Holdo patiently. "You are not going to break your neck. You don't even move."

"Worrywart," muttered Rose to Rey. "He plays trumpet in the band, doesn't he?"

"Yeah," said Rey. CJ was a notorious anxious wreck, and never failed to rattle off exactly how he'd heard once that the statistics of someone choking on a reed were five thousand to one, or that he was sure it would rain the day of an outside band rehearsal. "Just our luck."

"All right, well done," said Ms. Holdo as they ran through their blocking again. "Rehearsals will be Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings, starting at four and going to six. Please ensure this doesn't overlap with anything else you're doing _now_."

Rey looked at her hands as everyone else whipped out their phones to check their calendars. She felt eyes on her, and looked up to see Ben Solo, giving her a narrow-eyed look from under his eyebrows. He saw her watching and looked down quickly. _Creep_ , she thought viciously.

* * *

 

Rehearsals went off fairly smoothly, right up to the point where they got to the bit in "Music of the Night" where Ms. Holdo instructed Ben to put his hand over Rey's face for _turn your face away from the garish light of day_ and Rey went as stiff as a board, leaning backward.

"Stop, stop," said Ms. Holdo. "Jeez, you two. Ben, put your hand down. Rey, are you okay?"

Rey felt like everyone was staring at her. "I don't want anyone touching me," she said through thin lips.

Ms. Holdo walked up to her so she wasn't shouting across the stage. "Rey, this is…a dramatic song. He's acting out what he's singing with movements. He has to illustrate with his body what he's saying, just like you're using your body to react while he sings."

Rey was silent, looking at her shoes. "I don't like being touched," she said quietly.

"Ms. Holdo, I can talk to her," said Ben, and Rey felt heat flood her. Who did this guy think he _was_? "Five minutes."

"All right," said Ms. Holdo, and turned around. "We're taking a five, sit down and relax," she said, and walked off the stage.

Ben pointed to the yawning mouth of backstage, exposed by the lack of backdrop. "There's a place we can sit and nobody can hear," he said. "Behind the curtain. Come on."

Rey bristled a little, but followed him anyway to a prop tree, where he sat cross-legged and motioned for her to sit. She sat.

"Okay," he said awkwardly. "So, the thing about acting."

"If you're going to be condescending—"

"I'm not," he snapped, red in the face. "God, shut up for two seconds and let me think about what I'm trying to say without being on the attack all the time!"

Rey shut her mouth and glared at him. Ben took a deep breath and held it, then exhaled.

"Right," he said. "I got into acting because my mom thought it would help with my anger issues." He was crimson all the way to his nose. "Don't tell anyone that, okay?"

She blinked. "Oh. I wondered why your mom wouldn't make you do music."

"I do it on the side," he said. "But acting helps me concentrate and focus on the moment and…handle, you know, emotions that I don't have. Like if I'm playing someone who's angry, part of that is figuring out how much is too much and what's not enough, to get it across. Which helps in real life, you know."

"Oh," she said.

"So when you're on the stage—you're not _you_ ," he said. "You're the person you're playing. You're wearing them."

"I—" Rey hesitated, chewing on her lip. "That's how I feel when I play the flute. You're not really you, you're in the middle of a theme, you're…living another reality." It sounded idiotic, saying it out loud, but Ben's eyes lit up and he nodded.

"Yeah! Yeah. So it's the same principle. You forget everything about me, or Hux, or—or your friends, you know. You're someone else. I'm someone else. We're not two people who hate each other up here. We're the Phantom and Christine Daae, and this is the Paris Opera."

He said it casually, but it sent a slight shiver down her arms. "I've never told anyone about that," she said quickly. "Playing, I mean. I mean, what it's like."

"I won't tell anyone," Ben told her, and in the wings, it seemed like a secret pact, an oath. "Shake on it?"

He held his hand out. Rey regarded it, then took it, and they shook hands. Her fingers could barely close around his palm—and the handshake was broken and they were hurrying back to center stage.

* * *

 

Rey found herself enjoying rehearsals very much after that. It was like a roadblock had been passed. There was a brief incident during the second week where Hux jeered at her for almost tripping over her own foot during the choreography for "Masquerade", she hauled off and punched him in the mouth, and he went flying into the stairs. After he had been hustled off to the nurse's office and returned with a butterfly bandage on his fat lip, she had no more issues with Hux. He was even polite on occasion.

Mrs. Kanata and her army of costumers managed to scrape together a wardrobe from costume shops around town and antique stores, fitting everyone in almost a week. Rey, who had the most costumes out of everyone, absolutely hated it. Paige, who had the most elaborate, was delighted.

"I can't believe the rhinestones on that Hannibal costume," she gushed over biology homework to Rose and Rey, sitting on the floor of their living room. "And the skirt. I think it's like, three feet across."

"Rey's masquerade dress, though," Rose said, batting her eyelashes. "Ugh, I want to wear it for prom. Why do you look like you just swallowed a lemon?"

Rey looked up and realized she was frowning. "Oh. Uh. I don't know. I guess I was just thinking about how the prettiest things I've ever worn are…fake. For a play." She shrugged, trying to pretend it didn't bother her.

Mrs. Tico bustled in with food and set it all down down. "Clothes aren't everything," she said authoritatively. "Only if you're trying to impress someone. Like a bird."

"Mom, _male_ birds impress each other with colors," said Rose.

"Pssh. Same thing." Mrs. Tico waved her hand as if to say, _so what?_ "As long as you're clean and put together. Now eat this beef pho before it gets cold."

"Thanks, Mom," said Paige, and grabbed a bowl. "Are you coming to dress rehearsal? Parents are allowed. It's in two weeks."

"Maybe, if I can get off work." Mrs. Tico retreated back into the kitchen, and Paige gulped down noodles.

Rey dug into her bowl. "I heard Poe went from an A- in biology to a B+ and his mom threatened to pull him out of the show."

Rose rolled her eyes. "He'll be fine. Shara just really wants him to get into a good college."

"Yeah, who does _that_ remind you of?" said Paige, wiggling her eyebrows at the kitchen. She did an impersonation of her mother in a low voice. "Julliard for you, Paige, and Harvard for Rose. Nothing less. Won't accept it."

"I heard that, Vân!" Mrs. Tico said from parts unseen.

Rose doubled over in giggles and Rey choked on her pho. "Sorry, Mom!" Paige called out.

Something buzzed and Rose checked her phone. "Oh, hey. I have a text from Ben." She read intently, squinting at the screen. "It's for _you_ , Rey."

Rey stared at her. "What?"

"Yeah, he says he texted Hux, who texted Poe, who texted Finn, who texted him and told him you were at our house tonight." She thumbed through the message. "You want me to text him back?"

"Uh, sure," Rey said. "Tell him we're eating dinner and ask him what's up." _Is there a rehearsal we missed? No, we had one today, that's stupid. What does he want?_

Rose typed away and pressed send, and the phone buzzed again as she held it with one hand and ate pho with the other. "He says…his mom has a gift for you?"

"Ms. Organa?" Mystified, Rey set her empty bowl aside and leaned over Rose's shoulder to peer at the screen. The next text bubble popped up, and she read: _If you want to see it now I can bring it over. Or she can give it to you at school tomorrow._

"Tell him tomorrow," said Rey.

"Got it." Rose typed out, _she says tomorrow is fine, thanks!_

"I wonder what it is. Another backpack?" Paige tilted her head and looked at Rey's backpack speculatively.

"I have no idea." Rey frowned. "I hope it's not a prank."

"Ms. Organa wouldn't prank you," said Rose. "She's cool. And she likes you."

"No, she doesn't," said Rey. "She's always pointing out everything I'm doing wrong."

"That's because she thinks you have potential," said Rose. "People who play in Carnegie Hall don't hold their flutes like this." She demonstrated with her shoulders hunched and pulled a face, pretending to blow through an invisible mouthpiece.

Rey laughed. "I do not play like that!"

"Sit _up_ , Loan!" said Ms. Tico, coming back in with summer rolls. "Your back will get stuck like that. You'll go around forever like an old lady. Now eat these and finish your homework. I want you all in bed by nine, no arguments."


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good afternoon I am a fucking idiot and posted chapter 3 twice because my brain is completely broken. HERE is the right chapter. MEA CULPA.

Rey walked into the practice room slightly early and set her flute case on her usual chair. She liked it early, when nobody was in the room just yet, and she could be alone with her thoughts for a minute.

The door creaked open. "Rey?" said a voice, and she turned to see Ms. Organa, just coming in. "Ah, you're early. Good thing, too." She smiled and closed the door behind her, her long slate-gray sweater sweeping in the breeze.

"Oh, good morning, Ms. Organa," said Rey politely.

"I have something for you," she said, and reached into her purse. "Didn't wrap it. Ben said you'd prefer a straightforward approach."

Rey's eyebrows creased together. That was true, but how on earth had Ben figured that out? "I—"

Ms. Organa held out a white box, and Rey took it, then slid it open to reveal a brand new, just-off-the-shelves, iPhone in the latest model, gleaming and shiny with the film still over the screen.

She couldn't quite bring herself to move.

"I also have a protective case. Ben said you were prone to dropping things." Ms. Organa held out a brown, rubbery impact cover.

Rey's hands were shaking. She sat down quickly, the phone still nestled in its bed. "I can't—Ms. Organa, I—I—"

"I," said Ms. Organa, settling down in the chair across from her, "simply won't accept a no thank you. It's yours. And don't worry about the service charges or the data or the bill or anything like that. It's on our family plan and really quite reasonable."

"I've never owned anything new before." Rey said. "You should take it back, I think I might break it—" and it sounded like the words were squeaking past her vocal chords, and her eyes were very hot, and her vision was blurring and she couldn't cry in front of her music teacher, that was crazy; except she was, and she couldn't stop.

Ms. Organa wrapped an arm around her shoulder and made some motherly shushing noises until Rey had composed herself enough to reduce the sobbing to sniffles. "My son came home without a backpack and wouldn't tell me what he'd done with it. I finally got the truth out of him yesterday, would you believe that? Had to twist his arm to get him to tell me he did something _nice_ for someone."

Rey giggled and wiped her nose with her sleeve. "Yeah?" she managed.

"This morning I called up some parents of your friends, some of them my own students, and learned that they'd opened their homes to you for the last four years. Some longer than that. And that you've been, essentially, couch-surfing, I believe the term is, while legally in the custody of the Niima Children's Home, which you've nearly aged out of." Ms. Organa squeezed her shoulder gently. "And here I've been, the last three years, with no idea of any of this, and I feel—" Her voice caught slightly. "I feel that the system has done a terrible job of handling your case, and I am so very sorry that you've experienced anything less than love at this school."

Rey was crying again.

"So I hope this begins to—maybe not fix everything, of course, but to start helping you feel like one of your peers." Ms. Organa patted the box in Rey's hands. "And to keep in touch with people, because heaven knows, playing a game of 'who's last seen Rey' through my son last night took quite a long time, and that's coming from someone who grew up with party lines and rotary phones."

"I'm really sorry," Rey gulped, scrubbing at her eyes again. "I was with the Trans last night and I said you didn't like me and always pointed out everything I did wrong and—and—"

"Oh, Rey," said Ms. Organa, laughing and hugging her close again. "If I just let you play with bad form I wouldn't care very much, would I?"

"Noooo," wailed Rey, and cried harder.

"Shh," said Ms. Organa, and patted her on the back. "It's all right now. And I know there's no rehearsal tonight, so if you would like to come by or house for dinner, or to even spend the night, please feel free."

Rey wiped her eyes. "Okay," she said thickly. "Thanks."

"Now we'd better pull ourselves together before the rest of the class gets here." Ms. Organa stood in a swish of gray layers, and hurried over to the piano, and by the time Finn and Rose entered, Rey's face was entirely dry and she was bent over her flute, intently cleaning a spotless area.

* * *

 

Taking the bus back to Ben and Ms. Organa's house was so, so awkward.

Rey watched out the window as the houses began to get bigger and bigger, wide lawns and trimmed hedges and manicured landscaping. One or two homes even had a fountain in the front, and she wondered what the point of even having one of those was. Did people swim in them? The whole bus was giving her weird looks. None of them were people she knew, and she knew she stuck out like a sore thumb.

The bus creaked and hissed to a stop at a corner, and Ben swung out of his seat and hurried to the door. Rey snatched up her backpack and followed him out, ignoring the giggles and whispers as she descended the steps and slipped out the door. Once in the street, she took a moment to enjoy the crisp fall air, inhaling deeply as the bus ground and growled away.

Ben, a black hunched shape hurrying up the sidewalk, was rapidly disappearing. He turned around and waved, as if to tell her _hurry up_ , and she doubled her speed. God, his legs were long.

Rey followed him past a hedge and through a gate, and stopped dead in her tracks.

This couldn't be where he lived. Nobody could live here. Maybe the President, or a—a princess, or—anyone but Ben.

The house was massive, a solid white classic sort of house with a front porch big enough to live on, and pillars, and big windows, and a big double door, solid dark wood. Ben was hurrying up the steps and Rey just stood there like an idiot with her mouth hanging open.

Ben turned around at the top of the steps and looked at her, and she barely even saw him. "Do you need help walking up the steps or something?" he asked stiffly.

"What? Uh. No." Rey made herself put one foot in front of the other, and all the way up to the front door, where Ben opened the door for her and shut it behind her.

"Mom, we're here!" he called into the foyer, voice echoing, and Rey gaped at the size of the place. The floors were real wood, there were rugs on the ground, the furniture was beautiful and old and classic, they had curtains—but it wasn't, like, a sterile museum, it was clearly a lived-in place, with stacks of papers in the living room a sure sign someone regularly inhabited it.

Re automatically began to take off her shoes, out of force of habit from staying over at the Tico's, but paused. Her socks might stink this place up. Ben caught her hesitation and pushed his own sneakers off, leaving them by the door. "It's cool," he said, and jerked a thumb at the shoes. She peeled hers off and left them side by side, looking very small and shabby next to Ben's size thirteen kicks. "Let's go find Mom. Guarantee you she's in the kitchen."

The kitchen turned out to be the homiest place Rey had seen so far in the house. Cast iron, plaid towels, and gleaming appliances caught Rey's eye, and the smell of spices and bread and garlic made walking in absolute heaven. Ms. Organa was bustling around, wearing an apron and a big smile.

"Oh, hello! Good ride home?"

"Yes," said Ben.

"What are you _making_?" breathed Rey, enraptured.

"Lasagna. And garlic bread. It'll be ready in about twenty minutes. Ben, will you please give our guest a tour of the house so she doesn't get lost?" Ms. Organa pointed at him with a sauce-stained wooden spoon.

"Sure thing," he said, and pointed at the ceiling. "This is the kitchen. Ta-da."

" _Ben._ "

"All right, all right." He gave a half-smile, just at the corner of his mouth, and Rey realized she didn't think she'd ever actually seen him smile before. "Come with me."

* * *

 

The house was even bigger than Rey had thought. It had a living room, a study, a dining room ("we won't eat in there, we usually eat in the kitchen," Ben told her) the kitchen, a family room, a breakfast nook off the kitchen that had been converted into a sort of painting studio, the back patio, a small powder room, and a den—and that was only the first floor.

The second floor held five bedrooms ( _five_ , Rey was baffled) and three bathrooms, one of which Ben told her was attached to his mother's master suite, one of which was attached to his room, and the other, which was used as a guest bathroom. "That'll be yours if you stay over," he told her. "And you can pick whatever room, but the corner one is full of my mom's instruments, just so you know."

Rey sat down with a soft thump on a plush ottoman in the hall and Ben gave her a half-worried look. "Sorry," she said. "This is. A lot." She peered up at him. "I didn't know you lived in the freaking White House."

He snorted. "The White House is a lot bigger than this, trust me."

"You've _been_ there?"

"Well, yeah." He shifted uncomfortably. "My grandmother was a senator—both my mom's moms were, actually, and we used to go up there for holidays—"

"Your mom's—what?"

"Oh." He flushed. "My, uh. My mom's adopted. Her birth mother was a senator who couldn't keep her or her brother and her adoptive parents were friends of her birth mother. Sorry—it's complicated. Mom could explain it better."

"I didn't know she was adopted," said Rey, and felt a strange sense of kinship with the older woman, and also slightly jealous that she'd had parents at all.

"Do you, uh, want to see my room?" Ben offered, in a bid to steer the conversation away from more awkward topics.

"Uh, sure," said Rey. _He better not keep a collection of knives or something in there._

But Ben's room was nice: clean and well-organized, with the only real clutter on his desk and bookshelves. There wasn't a single whiff of the teenage boy funk that permeated Poe's room; Ben's whole living space smelled vaguely of pine.

"You have John Williams' entire life's work," Rey said, peering at the shelves.

"He's a good composer," Ben said, the tip of his nose flushing pink. "I like plugging in and just…tuning out. It's relaxing."

"Yeah, it is," Rey agreed, and turned to look at something else, but caught her reflection in the full-length mirror that stood at an angle between Ben's desk and his dresser.

She just looked…colorless. Shabby and brown and threadbare, with straggly short hair yanked into its constant ponytail and bitten-down nails and a look on her face like she had a chip on her shoulder. Her personal style could be described as _bare necessities_. Goodwill T-shirt, chunky brown pants that were a size too big, holey socks.

Ben must have seen the look on her face, because he said, "I…have a comb, if you—if you—"

Tears swelled up in Rey's eyes again and she turned her back on the mirror, fighting the urge to lash out at him. "A comb won't fix this," she said, gesturing to herself. "But thanks."

"Rey," he said, as if he wasn't sure how to pronounce her name. "I—I'm sorry this is weird."

She snorted through her tears. "Weird. Yeah. That's a way to put it. I had no idea—" She gestured around at the room, indicating the house, the neighborhood, the whole street. "You don't _act_ like you're—you—" She couldn't bring herself to say the word _rich._

"I'm not Armitage," he said sharply. "I don't go around in designer coats because I think I'm better than everyone else."

"Why do you even hang out with him?"

"He—" Ben looked down. "I don't really know. We're both into theater. But God, he's a dick."

"That's a word for it." Rey wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Ben offered her a box of Kleenex, and she blew her nose.

"You know his dad is on the school board, right?" Ben edged back and sat, perched, on the edge of the bed. "The day you punched him at rehearsal Armitage went to his dad whining. Wanted him to tell the board to expel you. Fortunately Mr. Hux isn't that type of dad and told him that the next time he decided to shit all over another kid just because they're less fortunate he'd personally show up and read him the riot act at school in front of everyone."

Rey had to smile at that mental image. "So that's why he's been _nice_ to me lately."

"Yup." Ben shrugged his shoulders. "And also because I sort of…might have threatened him."

"With what?"

Ben actually did smile then, and it changed his face entirely, from a dour long mien into boyish delight. "Told him I'd tell everyone in school his real nickname is Armie."

"Armie," said Rey, and giggled. "Oh, my god. That's awful."

"It's terrible," said Ben, fighting laughter. " _Armie._ He dumped it in middle school and swore us all to silence."

"You look so different when you smile," she said, grinning, and his face froze, then dropped slightly as he looked at the floor. "Was it something I said?"

"No, I just—" Ben fidgeted. "My mom thinks I look like Dad when I smile."

"Oh," said Rey. She'd never heard what had happened to Ben's dad, and she didn't want to pry. "Well, it looks nice."

Ben's dark eyes flashed up to hers and back down, as if to see whether or not she was serious. "Thanks," he said.

"Kids, come downstairs! Dinner's ready!" Ms. Organa's voice floated up, and Ben jolted off the bed.

"Oh, thank God. I was starving."

* * *

 

Dinner was delicious. They sat at the gleaming counter in the kitchen and Ms. Organa insisted Rey call her "Leia" at home while they worked their way through garlic bread and lasagna and glasses of iced tea, talking about the musical and school and music and a hundred other subjects. Rey had never seen Ben talk so much.

Ben shuffled off after dinner to get a shower and Leia piled the dishes in the sink and pulled out the family albums, showing Rey baby pictures of Ben, his ears already enormous even as an infant. Rey grinned at them and wondered if he'd been as grumpy as a baby as he was as an eighteen-year-old.

"And here he is with his father," said Leia, in a tone of unexpected tenderness.

Rey peered down and saw Ben, grinning widely and toothlessly, on the lap of a handsome man with Ben's crooked, full mouth and long, strong nose, and there the resemblance ended. Where this man's face was square, Ben's was long. Where this man was tanned, with a medium shade to his hair, Ben was pale and dark. Rey looked at the photos intently and almost thought you could cut out the features of his parents, stick them together haphazardly, and make Ben.

"He mentioned him upstairs," Rey said, letting her finger trace the picture.

"Did he?"

"Yes, I said he looked nice when he smiled and he said you think you look like his dad when he does." Rey peered sideways at Leia, who seemed to be composing herself slightly.

"I suppose you're wondering where he is," she said after a moment.

"Sort of," admitted Rey.

"He's dead," said Leia. "He died when Ben was about thirteen. It was… an accident, and Ben blamed himself for a very long time."

"Oh," said Rey, in a small voice.

Leia sat back a little and looked down at her photos. "He started having anger issues. Lashing out at others. I got him into acting—his therapist thought it might be beneficial."

"He told me that," Rey said. "During rehearsals, I think."

The older woman relaxed slightly. "Did he? Well. Good. At least it's sinking in and helping. He used to be such a cheerful boy. Always laughing, running around, showing me something he found in the yard. I hadn't seen him smile in ages, and then I suggested we get you a phone yesterday. He lit up like a sunrise."

Rey swallowed. That idea gave her quite a weird feeling in the pit of her stomach, which she wasn't sure she disliked, and wasn't sure she liked. "He…wanted to give me a phone?"

"He picked it out himself. And the case. And the accessories." Leia smiled. "I'm just glad you're not that awful Hux boy. I can only stomach so many snide comments about the _state_ of my upstairs, thank you."

"What on earth's wrong with your upstairs?"

"Absolutely nothing. Armitage just wanted to make very clear that _his_ father can afford a daily maid, while I make Ben do chores." Leia winked, and Rey smiled at her. "You go on up and get some sleep. I'll drive us all in tomorrow."

"I don’t have—" Rey blushed. "Clothes, I mean. I have these, but I didn't have a change with me at school today."

"Oh, don't worry about that. Sleep in the white bedroom; the dresser is full of things that should fit you fine." Leia waved a hand. "Feel free to borrow them for tomorrow, too. Sweet dreams."

* * *

 

Rey took a long, hot shower in the third bathroom, and emerged, damp, in a borrowed flannel robe. Ben had already gone to bed, and Leia was in her room, judging from the light gleaming out from under the door, so she slipped into the guest bedroom and shut the door before flicking on the light.

It was aptly named the white bedroom. The floor was the same polished pine, but the bed, the rugs, the wood of the dresser, and the curtains were all white. Someone, Ben, probably, had put her backpack on the ottoman at the foot of the bed and her flute case on the floor by the dresser.

Rey opened the dresser drawers cautiously and was pleased to find that the thing was stocked on the right with girls' clothing and on the left with boys' clothes. She pulled out a pair of clean underwear her size and a large T shirt, then collapsed into the bed, which was at least three times larger than the couch at the Trans' and much softer than the guest fold-out at the Damerons'.

She drifted off, nestled in the duvet, and dimly wondered if this would make rehearsal weird.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BIG warning for a description of gun violence in this chapter. In summary Rey learns how Ben's father died, and why Ben blames himself, and it's not pretty.

"All right, on three. Let's take it from the top of 'The Mirror' and go all the way through to the end of the next song. Mrs. Kanata?" Ms. Holdo looked like she hadn't slept in days, par for the course every time they did a musical. The first dress rehearsal was tonight, after this last run-through to work out blocking, and everyone was on edge. Paige's zipper had broken during the last fitting, CJ's pants had slipped off his skinny hips in front of everyone, and they were still trying to figure out how to stick the white mask to Ben's face without spirit gum.

Rey shifted into her seat on the old piano bench in front of the cardboard vanity standing in for Christine Daae's dressing table and waited for her cue as Old Miss Maz pressed PLAY on the stereo in the corner of the stage, sending the low, dramatic notes of the opening bars through the theater.

From somewhere offstage, Ben started singing, and the harsh tones he took as he spat out the words _insolent boy, this slave of fashion_ were probably not all completely acting. Hux had discovered Rey's overnight visit to the Organa house, and had several impolite things to say about it to Phasma, and of course it had gotten back to Ben, and they had gotten into a fight again.

Rey looked up, a pleading look on her face, and sang back to him, _angel, I hear you speak, I listen; stay by my side, guide me_. The mirror trick was going to be accomplished by clever lighting, so until that was set up, Ben was standing in the frame, nearly as tall as it. Rey went through her blocking and pretended she couldn't see him, up until the cue where she took his hand through the mirror and stepped into the underground labyrinth of the Paris Opera.

Or, you know. Across the stage for a couple of yards.

The music blared out, and they started into the titular duet as Ms. Holdo watched from the front row, clipboard in hand. Rey didn't forget any of the blocking (they didn't have a Broadway budget, obviously, and the fog machine was being fixed, so they just walked across the stage in a zig-zag toward the back until Ben stepped up on the raised platform there) and stepped lightly, wonder and awe on her face.

She got through the very end, ending on the high note that made her eyes water and her throat burn. She was insanely grateful to Mrs. Tico for shoving Paige's voice teacher at her _and_ for paying for a few lessons, or she would never have learned how to hit that damn thing.

"Go straight into 'Music of the Night'," called ut Ms. Holdo. "I like the dynamic. Keep going."

Well, good. Rey didn't have to move much for this one. The soundtrack shifted into a soft, delicate string melody, and Ben started to sing.

Rey felt her mouth go dry, just a bit. His eyes were fixed on her as he sang, and when he stepped forward and swept his palm across her face to sing _turn your face away from the garish light of day_ she moved with him, not against him.

When Ben came to the line _only then will you belong to me_ , he didn't do the blocking they'd rehearsed before—coming from behind to touch her face with the back of his right hand. Instead, he brought his whole left arm down across her front, and his hand pressed against her opposite shoulder, over her T-shirt, as if he was cradling her, or protecting her. He was so tall that her head automatically rested up by his bicep, and with a start, she realized his arms were a _lot_ thicker than she'd thought, and also that he smelled like pine and a very distant whiff of cologne.

 _Floating, falling, sweet intoxication…_ He was rocking her softly, in time to the music, and she shut her eyes. _Touch me, trust me, savor each sensation…_ Rey followed the rest of the blocking and let her right hand creep up to the side of his face, where the mask would be in dress rehearsal, and quick as a wink she was out of his arms as he swiftly caught her hand and backed away, leading her to stage right. _Let your dream begin, let your darker side give in to the power of the music that I write…_ She followed, eyes glued to his face. God, he was weird-looking, but _damn_ if he wasn't strangely compelling when he sang.

They did, to give the crew credit, have a mannequin behind the large canvas covering the prop mirror, and someone had dressed it in the worst wedding gown that they could find at the local consignment shop. Ben finished his line about the music of the night and swept the canvas off with a flourish, exposing the mannequin, and the whole thing fell off-angle from atop the mirror and landed on his head with a _thwump_ , giving him the appearance of a very spooky, paint-dappled Halloween sheet ghost.

Rey broke and cracked up. She couldn't help it. His arms were poking around inside the canvas, trying to find the edge, and the rest of the cast started laughing from where they stood backstage, and then even Ms. Holdo started giggling, her curly hair bouncing as she tried to cover her face with her clipboard.

"Stop, stop," she said, laughing, and waved to Mrs. Kanata, who cut the music quickly, her own brown face creased up in a smile. "All right, Rey, help Ben find his way out of that, and we'll reset and try again from the line _music of the night_."

Rey was already reaching up to yank the canvas off Ben, who emerged, red as a beet. "Nice going, Phantom," she said, and tossed the heavy material off to the side.

"Jeez. Don't let me do that opening night."

"It'll be velvet or something. You can sweep it to the side." Rey was still grinning. "Really gives a new meaning to 'Opera Ghost', huh?"

"Shut up," he said good-naturedly, laughing a little himself.

"All right, resetting. Ben, just pick up the curtain and drop it so Rey has a cue to react to. And. Action." Ms. Holdo sat back as Mrs. Kanata rewound slightly and pressed PLAY again, and Ben dropped the curtain on cue. Rey pretended to faint in shock, and Ben caught her and lifted her up in his arms.

This was the tricky part. He only had so much time to make it across the stage, and she'd been so hell-bent on not trusting him not to drop her that they'd been doing a weird half-drag across the stage to the bed for the last week until Ms. Holdo put her foot down and insisted he lift her for the next rehearsal, because it was a classic image, scene, whatever in _Phantom_ , and they needed to both step out of their comfort zones or they'd never learn.

(She was really, really fond of saying that.)

So really, this was the first time Rey'd let Ben pick her up, and she wondered what the hell she'd been so worried about as she kept her eyes closed. How could she could have ever thought he was lanky? He always wore so many layers of baggy clothing—but he was surprisingly muscular, and made it across the stage with ease, setting her down in the bed and settling a blanket over her as she pretended to sleep.

Precisely on cue, he sang, _you alone can make my song take flight_ as he circled the bed, and moved to center stage, finishing the last line and executing a very pretty high note for his finale.

The song ended, and Ms. Holdo clapped enthusiastically as Rey sat up, feeling sort of stupid in her little bed. "Well done, you two! Especially the changes to the blocking, you worked together very well. All right. Let's have…one more run through of 'Notes' and 'Primadonna', and the two of you can go get finished with whatever else needs to be done on your costumes before dress rehearsal."

* * *

Rey shimmied into her last costume and one of the seniors working on wardrobe for extra credit fasted it up the back, then made her turn around. "All right, looks like it fits!" she said around the pin in her mouth. "Wanna look in the mirror?"

"Uh, sure," said Rey, and turned around, giving her reflection a cursory glance.

Or, at least, she meant to give herself a quick once-over and say something nice.

"Oh, _wow_ ," was what she said instead, staring at herself.

Even without the full makeup and wig on, she looked so entirely different from her normal self that she couldn't help but stare. This was the dress for the graveyard scene, and it had been a tacky prom dress in a former life. Fortunately, with the hard work of Maz's team, it had been transformed into a navy taffeta skirt with a velvet bodice in the same color, taken in at the waist, and padded at the top slightly to fill Rey's thin chest out, the neckline diving down slightly and trimmed with lace.

Rey put her hands on her waist and turned from side to side, marveling at the pretty fabric, how it gleamed in the light. "It looks _great_ ," she said sincerely. "You guys did a really good job."

"Wait till you see Ben's makeup," said the older girl, grinning at the compliment anyway and tucking a lock of fine blond hair back into her bun.

"I told them not to show me a thing until the absolute last second," said Rey. "I want to be totally—aaah." She spread her hands and puffed her cheeks out. "You know. _Shocked_."

"Oh, you will be. I'm Kay, by the way. Kaydel, but everyone calls me Kay. Don't think we've met." Kay tugged at the zipper and peeled Rey out of it. "Oh, try on the peignoir. I want to make sure the front isn't too long."

Rey quickly did as she said, wrapping the white robe around her and tying it shut, her arms down as Kay eyed the hem critically. "It's comfy," she said.

"Yeah, we bought it from a thrift store. I added all that lace to the sleeves." Kay winked conspiratorially. "You can do a lot with clothes from Goodwill if you just have a sewing machine."

 _Maybe I should have gone into sewing instead of music._ "Someone mentioned they were having trouble with the mask."

Kay squatted and flicked the lace at the hem back and forth. "Oh, yeah. I think they're going to go with a black ribbon to tie it to his face. It'll blend in with his hair and you can yank it off easily." She stood. "Hem's good. Go ahead and change."

Rey was halfway out of the robe as the door opened and Ben walked in. "Hey, I—" He stopped short as Rey yanked the thing back onto her shoulders and clutched it top at the throat, her cheeks burning. She wasn't even in her underwear—the fittings were over a thin tank top she'd borrowed from Leia's guest drawer in the bedroom, and she still felt naked. "Sorry. I should have knocked."

"Well, nobody's keeping track. You have that cloak?" Kay held her hand out, and Ben handed her a bundle of black fabric before muttering another apology at the floor and rushing out. "Weird dude," said Kay, watching him go.

Rey wanted to agree, but also—the baby pictures. Leia's sad face. His dead father. _You don't know anything,_ she thought savagely, and then thought that was a little unfair of her, since she had felt the same way only a few weeks ago. "Anything else I need to try on?" she asked.

"Huh? No. You're good. See you in an hour for dress rehearsal." Kay took the robe and Rey shrugged her shirt back on (another borrowed item, a light brown Henley from Leia) and headed back out the door, letting it crash shut.

Ben was in the hallway, leaning against the wall. "Hey, uh, Rey," he said, pushing off awkwardly.

"Hi," she said, and paused, waiting for him to catch up.

"I, uh. Sorry about that." He looked miserably uncomfortable.

"It's not like I was naked," she said.

"Well, yeah. I mean, no. I mean." Ben looked like he wanted the floor to open and allow him to disappear. "You looked uncomfortable. So I'm sorry."

Rey felt herself blushing again, and wanted to die. "I—I just. I normally wear. Things. Not—" god, she was doing a terrible job of this. "The clothes I wear. I don't like being…not covered up a lot."

"Yeah, me too," he said, and indicated his torso. "So. The hoodies."

"But—" Rey gave him a blank look. "But you don't have anything to hide. You've—" She caught herself and choked, looking away.

"I've…what?" He looked half-suspicious.

"Nothing. I just—couldn't help but notice you're, um—ripped. Sort of." Rey was babbling, she knew it; her face was hot as fire. "When you picked me up, I mean. I thought—I thought you were this skinny kid and it was, like, _bam_ , muscles."

Ben frowned as if he was confused. "Well—yeah. I mean, I don't want to come off as a meathead. Why do _you_ wear… things that cover you up a lot?" He stumbled over the last sentence, flushing.

"I—" Rey paused, and shut her mouth with a snap. "I don't know. It's just more comfortable."

"You're hiding in them," he said, and he likely didn't mean to sound dismissive, but he did, and Rey's hackles went up, even as she knew he was right.

"No more than _you_ do," she said angrily. "So you don't want to look rich, you don't want to look like a meathead. What _do_ you want to look like? A school shooter?"

Ben flinched visibly. His eyes found hers, dark and hurt and shocked, and she realized she'd said something awful, something terrible, and she tried to say she didn't mean it, she was sorry; but he was pushing past her and then he was gone.

 

* * *

 

She gave it five minutes before she tracked him down.

Ben was sitting with his back to the wall in one of the storage rooms, with the unused props and stage pieces they hadn't been able to jerry-rig into anything usable for _Phantom_. His head was down, obscuring most of his face, and he was holding his phone tightly in both hands, the white cord of his headphones disappearing into the shadows of his hood.

Rey sat down beside him and didn't say anything. He knew she was there, he'd shifted as she sat.

After a moment he took out one earbud and addressed her without moving. The tinny, faint strains of the soundtrack to _Schindler's List_ drifted out. "What do you want?"

His voice was hostile, brittle and angry. Rey fought to not snap at him, and hunched over, her hands in her lap. "I came to say I'm sorry," she said quietly. Ben didn't say anything, so she pressed on. "I just—I get so _mad_ sometimes, and I guess—I guess I'm prickly about stuff I don't even know I'm prickly about, and then it's too late and I say something that hurts someone, so. I'm sorry."

Ben tapped pause on his phone and turned to look at her, and she saw his eyes were red-rimmed. He'd been crying, alone back here in the storage room. "Mom told you Dad died," he said hoarsely, as if he couldn't quite say the words.

"Yeah," said Rey, cautious. "She said—she said you felt responsible."

"I was fucking around with his guns," said Ben, and Rey suddenly felt as if she was very far away, maybe down a well; because she'd seen this kind of story before, in the news and by word of mouth, and she knew exactly how these stories ended. "I was a dumbass kid. A dumbass fucking stupid kid. He kept them locked up, and I found the key, and I thought I was going to be tough or something and load them, and—and I did, and I had my finger on the trigger, and he—he came in and barked at me, he said 'Put that thing down' and it startled me, and I—my fingers—"

"Oh, my _god_ ," said Rey numbly.

Ben was crying again, his face a blotchy patchwork of tears. "I hit him in the stomach," he sobbed. "The noise—my mom came running and called 911 and I just sat there shaking like a fucking _moron_ while he bled all over the floor and he—he kept telling _me_ it was going to be okay, until he turned gray and—stopped talking and he was _dead_ —"

Rey couldn't find the words to say. She didn't know if words existed. She just knew she'd called him probably the worst thing she could have called him, ever, and made him cry, and he was crying right in front of her, so she got up on her knees and wrapped her skinny arms around his wide shoulders, hugging him tight as he cried into her shoulder. "I'm so sorry," she managed, fighting her own tears. Guilt weighed on her throat like lead. "I didn't know, I didn't know. I'm sorry."

His phone clattered to the floor as he let go of it, both arms circling her back as he held her tight, still crying. "My mom hates me. I know she does. I know—"

"No, she doesn't," Rey insisted. "No, she loves you. She said she liked seeing you smile again—she told me that." The warmth of his arms was seeping through the fabric of his sleeves and into her back, and it was oddly comforting. She patted at his back and rocked slightly on her knees. "Shh, it's okay. Grownups don't make you go to therapy if they hate you."

Ben choked in spite of himself, a half-strangled little laugh. "You got me there," he said into her shirt.

"We have half an hour before we have to be back to get dressed," she told him. "So how about we—we just sit here, and chill. We don't have to talk."

He let go of her, almost quickly, and took a few slow breaths, then wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve. "Nobody knows about—that," he said, meeting her eyes with almost a heated, wary look.

"Nobody's going to know," Rey told him firmly. "I won't. And if anyone finds out and tries to give you shit I'll—I'll—" The idea stuck in her throat, and she pushed it away. "I'll kick their ass," she finished, with some anger.

"Thanks," he said. "You're not too bad, you know that?"

"Yeah, well. You're not either," she said.

"Here." Ben handed her his earbud, and picked his phone up. Once she got it nestled in her ear, he shuffled around and hit play, and the Indiana Jones theme song began to play.

"What program is that?" Rey asked, peering down at the screen.

"Spotify. You…want me to help you download apps on yours?" he asked carefully, as if trying to pick out the right words from a lineup.

"I—yeah," she said, unexpectedly warmed by his offer. "But first let's listen to this. It's my favorite."

"Yeah, me too."

And so they sat, side by side, sharing earbuds in the dingy storage room.


	6. Chapter 6

As Rey stood just backstage in her Hannibal slave costume and a wig cap, someone painting her face, she could hear Hux, Paige, Rose (who had all of one line) Finn, and Poe enthusiastically running through one last rehearsal of "Notes" with the other senior who was playing Madame Giry. Ms. Holdo was reciting the Phantom's lines at the end. She could just see them from where she stood.

" _I remain, gentlemen, your obedient servant, O.G._ "

"Original Gangster," said Finn, and dabbed.

Rose started laughing, and Ms. Holdo whacked her clipboard on the stage. "Don't you dare do that during dress rehearsal tonight," she said, distant and stern through the curtain.

"No, ma'am," he said meekly.

"All right, go get changed. You have fifteen minutes. Can we re-set the stage for the opening scene, please?" Ms. Holdo looked as if she needed a drink.

As everyone scurried off the stage (Poe still whispering "Original Gangster" and laughing as he went) and the small set crew started moving the real props on stage, Rey heard a soft, "psst," and looked over to see a very startling white half-mask, floating six feet in the air in the shadows.

"Jeez," she said, startled. Ben moved forward, and she saw the rest of him, emerging. Ghost, indeed.

"All right, your makeup's done," said the boy who'd been filling in her eyebrows. "Get your wig on quick."

Rey didn't bother looking in the mirror as she nestled the thing on her head. It had come from a rental place, smelled strongly of fabric softener and hairspray, and weighed about three pounds. The synthetic curls brushed her back as she moved.

"It's crooked," Ben said, and she felt his hands adjust the cap for her. He didn't have any gloves, and his hands were warm as he picked up a pin and secured it to her temples firmly. "There."

She turned and gave him a once-over. "You look spooky," she said. The cape and hat lent him an air of mystery, and the white mask was tied on with black ribbon, which blended nicely into his hair. She wondered what the makeup looked like.

"I look dumb," he said. "You look…nice."

Rey turned to look at herself, and barely recognized her own face under the stage makeup. "I don't even wear _normal_ makeup," she said. "This makes me look like a clown."

"You'll get used to it." He smiled and whisked his cape up in front of his mouth. "I vant to suck your bloooood," he intoned, in a very bad accent.

Rey rolled her eyes, and Ms. Holdo poked her head into the area. "Ten minutes," she said. "Rey, you look very pretty. Go find the chorus girls and Rose. Ben, get your butt back into the wings; you don't perform until the end of 'Think of Me'."

"Yes, ma'am," he said, looking chastened, and retreated.

Rey hurried to the other side of the stage, where Rose was already in her Hannibal costume and makeup. She looked up and beamed as Rey approached. "You look so cute!" she gushed.

Rey rubbed her bare upper arms. "I feel half naked. You look pretty, though."

"I just hope I don't fall," Rose said. "I mean, it looks more complicated than it is. The dance, I mean."

* * *

 

The first scene, the auction and the chandelier reveal, went off without a hitch. Hux rushed backstage to scrub off his old-man makeup, and CJ, the sophomore playing Levefre, Paige, Poe, Finn, Artie (in a false beard and moustache), the chorus girls, Rey, Paige, and the senior playing Madame Giry (Rey made a note to try to remember her name) rushed out and took their places as the lights came up for the Hannibal scene.

Even though she knew it was coming, and that it was only a play, Rey still got the chills when the false backdrop collapsed and they all went into subdued hysterics about the Opera Ghost. The junior playing Buquet gave his little four-line song about how it must have been a ghost, Paige flounced away, and Rey took her place, singing 'Think of Me' until the lights went down and two of the set girls replaced her skirt as fast as possible before they came back up and she continued the song as the star of the opera.

Hux, out of his makeup and way off to the right, sang his piece. _Can it be? can it be Christine?_ It was a credit to his acting skills that he very much sounded as if he was head over heels for her.

The scene ended, and Rey rotated quickly to face the back of the stage, lit as if it was the front with a painting of the audience. A false curtain lowered, and she turned to face the real audience, "backstage", as the chorus girls hugged her in delight.

Rey shifted downstage, remembering the right blocking, and heard Ben, somewhere close by, but unseen. _Brava, brava, bravissima…_ Rose, following, sang out her line, _Christine, Christine!_

They went into "Angel of Music" almost perfectly, and ended with Madame Giry handing Christine a letter and leaving. Rey put on the dressing gown quickly while the lights were off her.

Enter Hux, smiling. He almost looked handsome, holding the prop bottle of champagne, and he and Rey pulled off "Little Lotte" without a single mistake, and he left the stage, and Ben began to sing again.

The mirror, finally a working set piece, began to glow as they sang, and Hux began to shout on cue for Christine as Rey stepped through it, holding Ben's hand, and disappeared into the darkness, the stage lights extinguished.

She knew this part well. They zigzagged across the stage, Ben singing, blocked 'Music of the Night' perfectly; he lifted her, he laid her down, he finished the song, and the lights went dim.

They only had half a minute before the next scene, and Rey could hear Ben rustling around as he moved sheet music into the right place. The lights came up, and Rey remembered this was the original unmasking scene, and her stomach lurched excitedly. She waited for her cue, and started to sing "I Remember", slipping out of the bed and making her way up to where Ben sat at his desk (they'd changed it to a desk, since making an organ was going to be way out of budget).

Slowly, her fingers crept around the side of the mask, and she quickly tore it away from his face as he turned to keep it shrouded from the audience.

Rey screamed.

It wasn't on purpose, either. At first glance it looked like his skin was shredded, misshapen and bleeding and scarred, and then her eyes realized what she was seeing and that the "skin" and scars were latex and the "blood" was paint and they'd covered up his right eyebrow with gum or something. Her heart was still pounding as she took several steps back and Ben launched into his half-sung, half-shouted rant, then calmed down and sang the bit about _secretly, secretly dreams of heaven_ and Rey gave him his mask back.

The lights went down and she and Ben hurried offstage as the crew reset the scene quickly for the Buquet-and-the-lasso scene.

"That is _terrifying_ ," she whispered at him as she was stopped and helped into her pageboy-as-maid costume for Il Muto.

He grinned at her. "Good reaction. You should keep it."

* * *

 

The rest of the musical progressed very well, and aside from Rey stepping on the hem of her cloak during "Wishing", one girl misstepping during "Masquerade", and Paige tripping over a rope someone had forgotten, there were no mishaps whatsoever.

Ms. Holdo hurried up to Rey, who was done changing and still in her stage makeup. "Okay, so for—" she peered at her notes. "The unmasking scene. That scream was _good_ , but tone it down to maybe a…startled cry. Like a yelp. The focus of the scene is the Phantom's anger, not your reaction. Save that for Don Juan."

"Okay," said Rey, slinging her bag over her shoulder.

"And the kiss at the end—I know I said you could do the fake stage kiss with your thumb, but it's coming off a little…forced." She waved her hand.

"Oh," said Rey. She had no idea how a kiss could look forced. "Like…am I being too pushy?"

"No, no." Ms. Holdo pushed her glasses up on her nose. "It looks fake, I mean. You want to come in with emotion, but be strong about it, and don't stand like a board."

"Ms. Holdo, we can't get the chandelier back down," said a stagehand.

"Oh, lord," said Ms. Holdo. "Rey, just—think about that and we'll try it out again Monday."

Monday. Right. Rey stood there in the dark for a moment, trying to remember whose house she was supposed to go to tonight. Fridays were…the Damerons, right. She pulled out her phone to text Poe, and frowned when he replied and said he was sorry but his mother had gone out of town to visit her sister and he wasn't even at home, he was bunking over at Finn's for the weekend and they'd already left.

"You okay?" asked Ben, zipping his hoodie up as he came out of the wardrobe room. He'd taken all his makeup off, at least.

"No, it's just—" Rey waved her phone. "I normally stay at the Damerons' on Friday, but Shara's out of town and Poe already went to Finn's."

"Oh, that's fine. You can come home with me." Ben rubbed his nose. "Unless, you know. You have another place?"

"Oh, I—no, I don't," said Rey, feeling slightly disoriented at the thought of another overnight stay in the massive house. "I mean, if it's not too much trouble—"

"It's not," he reassured her. "Come on. I'll drive you."

Ben's car proved to be a reliable, ugly little black Nissan with a manual transmission. It was spotless, and Rey slid into the passenger side, slightly relieved that it wasn't something like Hux's gleaming BMW.

"It'll be kind of nice having someone around for the weekend," said Ben as he shut the driver door and started the car.

"The—weekend. Right." Rey swallowed.

"Is that—do you normally stay somewhere all weekend, or…"

"Oh, yeah, I do," she said. "Sorry. I just—I thought maybe you wouldn't want me there all weekend."

"Oh," said Ben, backing out of his parking spot. "No, I—I do. I mean—I mean it's okay with me if you stay all weekend, I'm not going to kick you out or anything."

Rey smiled. "Your mom would be pretty pissed."

"Oh, yeah. She never shuts up about you." Ben hunched forward over the steering wheel, handling the clutch and the gas pedal with ease.

"Really?"

"Really. You're her best pupil, you apply yourself so well, blah, blah, blah." He shot her a sideways little look. "She thinks you'd be able to make it into Juilliard on a music scholarship if you worked really hard."

Rey felt like the breath had been punched out of her lungs. "Juilliard? _Me_?"

"Yeah. I'm probably not supposed to tell you that."

"I'll add it to the list of things we tell each other that we're not supposed to talk about," Rey said, and clenched her hands under her knees to stop them from sweating. Juilliard. She could go far away and leave behind the whole mess of her life so far. Maybe she'd play at Carnegie Hall, or get good enough to become a teacher like Leia, or be a composer—

"Huh," said Ben, as they pulled into the driveway, interrupting Rey's rosy dreams of the future. "My mom's car is gone."

"She's not home yet?" Rey got out of the car as soon as he'd put it in park. "Is she okay? It's almost nine."

"I don't know," he said, sounding confused, and Rey followed him into the expansive garage, where he turned off the lights and got in through the kitchen door with his key.

A few lights were still on, and there was a note over the stove: _Ben—I won't be home this weekend, emergency with your uncle. Nothing serious, but I'll be out of town until Monday. Dinner is in the fridge. Don't throw any parties while I'm away. Love, Mom._

"Uh," said Rey awkwardly as she scanned it.

"Do you—" Ben looked as if he didn't quite know what to do with himself. "Do you want to still stay?"

Rey screwed her face up and looked at him for a moment, and thought. She thought about the aggressive assholes on the football team who tried to hit on the other girls during band practice, and one of the stories Rose had told her about a senior at another school who locked a girl in his parent's room and wouldn't let her out until she did things that Rose wouldn't go into detail about.

No, Ben wouldn't do anything like that. She wasn't sure if they were really friends, but they definitely weren't enemies anymore, and he wasn't the type of person who would disregard her feelings about anything. And she absolutely, definitely was not staying at the Children's Home for two days.

"Yeah," she heard herself saying. "Yeah, I'll stay."

He almost looked relieved. "Oh. Good. I'd hate to wake up the Ticos at this hour." And yet, somehow Rey knew that if she'd even hinted at wanting to go over there, Ben would have immediately called them and driven her over himself.

Rey's stomach growled, and she realized she hadn't eaten anything since lunch. "What did your mom make for dinner?"

Ben opened the fridge and poked his head in. "Looks like meatloaf and mashed potatoes. I'll heat you up a piece."

"Two pieces," Rey said. "Please," she added as an afterthought.

"You got it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh Boy rey and ben in a house ALONE what ever could happen next you guys


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS is the chapter where we earn the mature rating. heavy petting, making out talking about sex etc. pls enjoy

It was ten, and Rey could not fucking sleep.

She tossed and turned in the massive bed in the white bedroom, and even though it was familiar and felt right, she couldn't get comfortable.

Washed clean of stage makeup and freshly showered, she'd stepped out of the bathroom with a towel on, not expecting Ben to be standing _right freaking there_ in nothing but pajama pants and a tank top as he walked to his room. He'd jumped, startled, and looked at her with large, frightened eyes.

She'd yelped and rushed back into the bathroom, clutching the towel tight and feeling like her ears might burn off. His door had shut, and she'd peered out until she was satisfied he was there no longer, then made a mad dash to her room and shut the door.

And now she couldn't sleep.

Ben's arms were _big_. He couldn't be only eighteen, she thought. He would have fit in on the football team, or lacrosse. She'd never seen him without his ever-present black, oversized hoodie, and the contrast was shocking, the pale, muscular arms, the way his tank top had clung to his body, suggesting more muscle beneath.

Rey rolled over again, trying to block the image out of her mind. Nope. Not working. _Big arms_. She remembered how he'd lifted her like she was nothing, how he'd almost broken the cafeteria table by just slamming his fist down. _Stop it. You do not have a crush on Ben Solo. That's disgusting. Stop!_

His hands were big. She remembered that, too.

_Stop thinking about his hands!_

The year she'd been held back, in sixth grade, a teacher had tried to touch her. Rey thought he'd been expecting her to just take it, but she'd bitten him so hard on the arm that he'd yelled and then she'd run away and hid in the bathroom until a monitor had pulled her out. Nobody had done anything except reprimand her for biting a teacher until the creep tried to feel up someone else's daughter, a girl with the advantage of rich and very angry parents, and that teacher had disappeared.

That was why she'd been held back in middle school. They thought she was a troubled student, and her grades had plummeted because she'd been so furious at the whole school that she'd refused to do any work at all and sat in the back, glaring.

But she'd never let anyone touch her after that. Quick hugs were one thing: high-fives, casual fist-bumps. The thought of someone laying hands on her made her skin crawl, and she had tamped that part of herself that might have _wanted_ that way, way down somewhere she didn't want to go anymore. So while Rose was gushing about Finn and Shara teased her about Poe, Rey had listened and smiled and moved on, focusing on school and flute and music and things she liked, and definitely, absolutely, one hundred percent, _that did not include boys._

Rey sat up in bed and huffed, blowing her hair out of her face. It was ten-fifteen and she still could not sleep. The bed was too big. She shut her eyes and indulged herself for the briefest of moments, pretending she would get up and go into Ben's room, and maybe she would say something suave and aloof and maybe _he_ couldn't sleep either, maybe he was thinking about _her—_

Rey clapped a hand over her mouth at the thought. Of course he wasn't thinking about her. What a stupid idea. She was a scrawny, skinny girl who looked two years younger than she was from years of not getting enough food, and she yelled at him all the time. That was not what boys liked. She wasn't stupid. Boys liked girls who smiled and agreed with everything they said and fluttered their eyes and let them get away with anything. And it helped if you were gifted in the chest department. Rey peered down at her own flat, undersized chest and scowled. She'd never even been kissed—

Suddenly, all she could think about was the stage kiss, Ben's mouth right next to hers as she kissed her own thumb, along his cheek, and Ms. Holdo informing her that she needed to work on making it not seem so forced, and it suddenly seemed like maybe it would be a very good idea to tap on Ben's door and see if he was still awake, because—because—

Rey was out of bed and in the dark hallway before she could talk herself out of it. Slowly, silently, she crept up to Ben's door and listened at the crack, her heart pounding.

Very faintly, she could make out soft strains of music behind the door, and a dim glow beneath it. He was awake after all.

She raised a fist and hesitated, and that was when the door opened, revealing Ben, in his pajamas, staring at her like she was the last thing he'd expected to see.

"Shit," he said automatically, and stepped back. "Sorry."

"No, I—" Rey felt her face heating up again, and cursed her traitorous face for blushing so easily. "I'm sorry."

"Was the—did the music—"

"No, I—I thought—"

They talked over each other, and Ben shook his head. "The music didn't wake you up?"

"No," she said, relieved slightly. "No, I—" she fumbled for an excuse. "I thought I heard a weird noise and it, uh, freaked me out."

"A noise," he said.

"Yes." Rey couldn't look at him. He was almost a head taller than her, bare shoulders wide, waist narrow.

" _You_ got scared by a noise," Ben said, as if he was lightly making fun of her, and she snapped her head back up to look at him, and she saw vague amusement in his eyes. "You're not scared of anything."

"That's not true," she said, with some heat. "I—I don't like spiders."

"Nobody likes spiders. That doesn't count."

Flummoxed, she searched for something else to say. "Why were _you_ getting up?"

It was his turn to blush and look away from her. "I, uh. Must have heard that same noise you did."

"But there wasn't a noise," Rey said automatically, and closed her mouth with a snap.

"No, there wasn't," he said, and looked back at her. "Do you—do you want to come in?"

An awful heat was gathering somewhere in Rey's gut, down her legs, in places she did not want to think about at all. "I—" She swallowed. "Ms. Holdo said the end kiss was forced," she blurted out. "I—she told me to work on it, and—and—" Rey couldn't finish the sentence.

"Okay, then…come in, and we'll…work on it," said Ben, as if every word was a step through a minefield. "If that's what you—"

"Yeah," said Rey, trying to be casual, and he stepped aside, letting her slip in and leaving the door ajar.

The room was dimly lit by one lamp on the nightstand. Ben had been listening to music on his notebook computer, and he hastily swept it off the rumpled bed before sitting down. "You can, uh. Sit here." He patted the bedclothes in front of him.

"Right," said Rey, and sat down. Her hands were shaking, and she tried to make them stop by clenching them into fists.

"So what did Ms. Holdo say?" Ben asked.

"Oh, right," said Rey. "Um. She said I was too forced and that I needed to relax, I think. I was too stiff?"

"Yeah," said Ben, a little too casually. "That can happen if you're not comfortable."

"I don't," said Rey, and squeezed her eyes shut. She wanted to say so much, and she couldn't figure out how. "I don't think I'd be uncomfortable if I figure out what I'm doing," she said.

"Figure out—oh. You haven't ever kissed anyone before," he said.

"No, I haven't," she informed him, trying to keep the lid on her temper. Why did he _do_ that? Cut right to the heart of the issue every single time she said anything—

"Well, uh. I have." He looked uncomfortable, and one hand rose up to rub the back of his neck.

" _Oh_ ," she said automatically, and clamped her mouth shut. "I mean. Who?"

Ben gave her a weirdly blank look. "Uh, a couple of girls. Not, like, every girl in the whole school, though. Two."

"Oh," she said again.

"It was for plays, though, so it probably doesn't count." He was eyeing her with a strange look, as if he wasn't sure whether or not they were really having this conversation. "Not—I don't just go around kissing people."

"Right, no," she said. "You don't seem like you would…do…that."

"Is there—is there a reason you don't like being touched?" he ventured.

"Yes," she said shortly, and caught the look on his face, and decided she might as well plunge on ahead. If he'd told her about his father, she could tell him about this. "My creepy history teacher.  Sixth grade at Niima Middle. He tried to put his hand down the front of my shirt. So I bit him on the arm. He got fired after he tried it on someone else, though."

Ben's right hand clenched into fist, his arm taut. "He did _what_ ," he said flatly.

"And I got held back a grade." Rey crossed her arms, unconsciously across her chest. "So. Yeah."

"That's not fair," he said angrily. "You should have had—someone to help you. Counseling, or—or—"

"Counseling costs money and my sixth family didn't care," she told him. "Nobody cared about me after Mr. Plutt was let go. They all wanted to talk to the other girl, the one with a mom on the PTA and a rich dad. They're the ones who got him fired."

Ben looked outraged. "That's bullshit," he managed.

"Yeah, well." Rey shrugged, trying not to look at him. "So. Now you know."

"That's why you hide," he said. "You wear those baggy clothes."

 _Can you not_? she wanted to snap, but something inside her crumbled a little and she knew he was right. She'd known it was the truth already. He was just pointing it out. "Yeah," she whispered, feeling tears creep up behind her lids.

"If—if the costumes make you uncomfortable, I can ask Ms. Holdo to change them," he said, all earnest wide eyes, and she wondered how she ever in a million years thought he was weird-looking. "I'm sure it wouldn't be a big deal. Rose even said to me you didn't like the slave costumes. Maybe we could get you a scarf, or—"

Rey let out a small noise halfway between a sob and a gasp and flung herself forward, directly into him, both arms tight around his chest. "Why are you being so nice to me?" she cried, her face pressed into his torso.

"Wh—what?" he asked, baffled, his hands hovering above her back. "I'm not—I'm just—"

She pulled back, tears on her cheeks. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't—I—" Hugging him before had been different— _he_ had been the one crying. "I don't—go around hugging people," she said, embarrassed at her outburst.

"Well, that's twice in one day, so I guess I'm special," he said, a small smile at the corner of his mouth. Rey wiped her face with the heels of her hands and realized they were sitting very close together, his knee extending into her space. "Look," he said, and she found it very hard to concentrate. "People should be nice anyway. It doesn't matter who they are."

"I know that," she said. "I'm—just amazed you didn't blame me or something, and—I'm just mad at myself, because I've been mad at you for three years over something that wasn't even your fault. And nobody's ever…said this kind of stuff to me."

"Well, you can't fix the past," he said reasonably.

"And I—I don't want you thinking that I'm only hanging out with you because of the phone," she added, slightly embarrassed.

"God, no," he said. "Mom said you tried to give it back before you started crying. You are…aggressively non-materialistic. Compared to Hux, it's a relief."

Rey snorted. "So, are we—are we friends now? Is that—what this is?"

"I… I guess," Ben said. "You know, I wanted to apologize for years for that crap in eighth grade, but every time you saw me you'd disappear, so I figured you just didn't want to talk and I left you alone."

"Actively avoiding," Rey told him. It seemed so stupid and petty now. "All right. So. Friends."

"Friends. Yeah. And friends help friends figure out how to not look like a board on stage," Ben told her.

Oh, right. That was—why she'd come in. Rey swallowed. 

"So. When you come in for the kiss, you can hold me by the cheeks before you, uh, kiss me," he said.

"Like…" Rey reached up and pressed her hands to his face, one firmly on either side of his mouth.

"Uh, no," he said through squeezed lips. "Here." He reached up and moved her hands until she was brushing his skin, fingertips only, higher up—more across his cheekbones. "Like that."

"Oh," said Rey, and took her hands down. "Let me try again." She reached forward and cupped his face, making sure to not squish him, and he watched her intently as she moved. "Like that?"

"Like that," he said. "And then when you come in for the kiss, try to angle your mouth a little and get my bottom lip between yours. Not, like, biting it or anything over the top like that, just press it there."

This was much better. Entirely sexless, dry coaching through How To Kiss Someone. Yes, perfect. Just what she wanted. "Right," said Rey, and didn't move.

"Um, I meant to go ahead and try it," he said.

"Oh," said Rey, and ducked forward quickly, hovering for a second over his mouth, then pressing a quick, close-mouthed peck to his bottom lip before pulling back, scarlet from throat to ears. "Oh, _god_. I can't do it."

"That was okay!" he said quickly as her hands dropped. "That was fine. Just…you know, on stage you have to hold it for a moment."

"I know," she said testily, the feeling of his lips still tingling on hers. "Let me get…used to that for a second, okay?"

"Oh. Okay." Ben waited, and she couldn't help but notice his lips were pink where she'd touched them, a slight flush blooming high up on his cheeks.

God, she wanted to—she didn't know what she wanted to do. "Okay. Blah, blah, creature of darkness, you're not alone," she paraphrased, and reached up again, cupping his face between her palms and going in for the kiss.

Except this time, she stayed put, and his mouth was warm under hers, and she felt him move a little as she let her lips part just, _just_ the slightest bit, experimentally, and his did the same and he tasted like mouthwash and this was—this was—

Ben's lips moved across hers, shockingly soft and plush, and heat flooded her entire body. She wanted more. She wanted—Rey got her knee across his thighs and pressed one hand to his shoulder. His skin was warm and firm, and his arms came up to hold her steady, and the heat of him was coming through her shirt.

He broke the kiss, pressing his forehead to hers. "Rey," he said, and his voice was colored with something rough and unsteady she couldn't identify.

"I—" Rey's voice caught in her throat, but he wasn't pushing her off him, or calling her names, or anything like that. He was still holding her in the crook of one arm, his other hand firmly clutching the duvet. "I don't—"

"It's all right," he said quickly. "But, uh. If you kiss me like _that_ on stage while I'm wearing tight pants, we might have a problem."

"What—oh. _Oh_." Rey looked down between their bodies, and then back up. It was too dim to see much, fortunately. "I'm—I didn't mean to—I'm—" She vaguely recalled a sex ed class, but couldn't remember much detail about this particular phenomenon. Besides, you know, the obvious. "Did I hurt you?"

"No, it doesn't hurt," he said, and she realized his eyes had dilated quite a bit, black swallowing the warm brown. "Are you—I didn't want to touch you, you said—"

Rey shook her head. "I’m fine," she said, and she was, to her own surprise; but she very much wanted another kiss—which was also surprising. "Can I. Can I do it again?"

"Yeah," he murmured, and she cradled his head again between her palms, looking at him for a moment. Big dumb nose, oversized ears, and the softest eyes she'd ever seen. She pressed her mouth to his again, slightly open, and he shuddered, like, _actually_ shivered under her like she was made of ice, and his tongue flicked out between their lips, tracing her lower one. His nose was pushing into her cheek, right by _her_ nose, and she made a soft little noise in her throat, because she felt like if she didn't do _something_ she was going to explode, and before she knew what she was doing her hands had moved down to his ribbed shirt, fingers creeping under the fabric, and Ben was making noises in his throat that certainly were not distressed or angry or anything like that, and then she was yanking it off him and leaning back to look at him, her mouth leaving his.

"Oh, wow," she said, staring in frank appreciation.

He blushed, and the color spread all the way down to his sternum. He wasn't, like, bodybuilder ripped or anything like that, she considered as she tilted her head to take it all in. But he was solid, and the sharp lines of his chest were thrown into relief by the bedside lamp, his abs not defined sharply, but clearly there, flat and solid. There was still a softness to him, something as-yet untouched by adolescence or adulthood.

She wanted to touch him. She felt horribly shy. She reached out hesitantly, her fingers hovering above his skin, and looked at him, the question in her eyes.

"Yeah," Ben said, sounding slightly strained, and she pressed her palm to his shoulder, slipping it down to his chest, across the lines of muscle. She was still clutching his shirt on her left hand. She'd forgotten it was there.

"You," she said softly, and couldn't remember how to finish the sentence. "You, um." One finger drifted across his flat nipple, and he stiffened slightly, his neck tense. "Is that—"

"It's fine," he said thinly. "You, uh." He gave her a once-over and swallowed visibly. "You should take yours off, too. Just so the, uh, playing ground is even."

"Playing—" Rey scrunched her nose up at him. "You don't have _breasts,_ it's not the same—"

"Oh, _really_ , from the way you're touching mine, I'm not sure," he teased, his dark eyes gleaming. "I'm not serious. I'm not going to make you take your shirt off."

"I know that," she said, rolling her eyes. Although. That _was_ an idea. Nobody had ever seen her naked before. She was sure Ben, for all his claims of not being serious, _did_ want to see her.

Quickly, she pulled her shirt off over her head and threw it to the ground, her face flaming. "There," she said. "Now we're even."

He stared at her like he couldn't stop. She even looked down to make sure she didn't have a pimple on her chest or something. What was he _looking_ at? "You," he managed, flushed across the cheeks. "That. I. It. The."

"Are you okay?" she asked.

He stretched out his hand. Big, warm, slightly trembling; the fingers paused half a foot from her body, and then he looked at her, the question silent in his eyes.

Rey didn't answer him, but leaned forward, bringing her chest to his hand, and he flinched, his hand covering her whole right breast and then some. "Holy _shit_ ," he said.

Rey closed her eyes. He was gentle, and it felt nice. "Here," she said, and pulled the other hand up to cover the left side.

Ben closed his eyes like he was praying for strength. "I've never—I—" He struggled to get a coherent sentence out, and both hands squeezed gently, the flesh beneath shifting. " _Whoa_ ," he whispered.

"They're not even that big," she said defensively. "I have A cups. That's tiny."

"I don't care," he said, and let his thumb trace across her nipple, and _that_ sent quite the feeling through her, making her squeal and clutch his shoulder. "Good?"

"Yeah, good," she panted, and shivered as he did the same thing to the other one. " _Ooh_."

"Do you," he stammered, and let his hands drop down, tracing across her flat, hard stomach. She shivered. "Have you. You haven't. Sex?"

"Uh," said Rey, her hands still planted on his chest. "I. No. I haven't. Have you?"

"No," he said. "You're—seventeen?"

"Almost eighteen," she told him, and racked her brains for her birthday. "In December. In a month."

"S-sixteen," Ben forced out, his eyes squeezed shut as her hands dipped down to his waist and her thumbs slipped into his waistband. "Aaah— _cold—­!"_

Rey brought her hands back up. "What's sixteen?" she asked suspiciously.

Ben was trying to remember how to breathe. "Age of consent in this state," he said, and exhaled harshly. "Didn't you get that talk in sex ed?"

"No," said Rey.

"Oh," he said. "Well. Now you know."

This morning, sex had been the absolute least thing on Rey's mind. Now, it seemed like it was the only thing she wanted—but the idea was somewhat terrifying. "Do you—did you want to have sex?"

Ben opened one eye and gave her a look. "I'm not answering that. Do _you_ want to?"

Rey didn't know how to answer that in the least. She looked at the wall and felt heat drenching her face again.

"You can say no," he prompted. "I'm not an asshole."

"It's—" She struggled for a second. "I've never even seen a guy naked, except for babies. And I kind of want to get used to, um, the first part, with the kissing and stuff, before I do the rest of it."

"That's fine," said Ben, sounding relieved. "I, uh. I feel the same way, actually."

"Really?"

"Yeah. I don't want my first kiss and the first time I have sex to be on the same day. That's… too fast for me." He looked vaguely unsettled, as if he was expecting her to laugh at him.

"No, that's how I feel," she assured him. "Okay. We're on the same page."

He laughed. "Yeah. Good. Well, uh. I'll just… let you go back to sleep, then."

"Right," Rey said, and gathered her discarded shirt up, pulling it back down over her. "So, uh. Thanks. For the practice. And…the rest of it."

He nodded. "Night, Rey."

She hurried to the door and gave him a smile. "Night, Ben."


	8. Chapter 8

They got up late Saturday and made pancakes, then sat in the family room watching old Looney Tunes cartoons and laughing at the hijinks as they mopped syrup (real maple syrup, not the flavored corn syrup Rey was used to, and it was _good_ ) off their plates with forkfuls of pancake.

After breakfast, Ben mentioned, "you know, we have a pool, right?" and Rey, who had barely learned to swim at all, changed excitedly into a spare swimsuit in the bottom drawer of the guest room and met him out on the patio in the balmy fall air.

He was just showing her how to float on her back in the shallow end when the back gate opened and Armitage Hux walked in, followed closely by Phasma.

"Jesus," said Ben, and Rey jolted upright in the water, spluttering and wiping locks of hair out of her eyes.

"Nobody was answering the front door," said Hux, his eyes sweeping across Rey lazily. "I see why. Swimming lessons? Cute."

"What do you want?" Ben asked, and shifted so that he was between Rey and the pair of them, standing at the edge of the deep end.

"Jesus," said Hux, and rolled his eyes. "I'm not going to murder you, Ren. Phasma and I were heading down to the mall for a while. You want to come?"

Rey was very sure that "the mall" was not referring to the dingy strip she bought her clothes at, containing a Ross, a Goodwill, and a Dollar Tree, but instead probably the Millennium Plaza, on the "good" side of town, containing the kind of stores where a single purse cost a year's rent for the Damerons.

Ben turned to her. "Stay here," he said quietly, and made his way to the side, lifting himself out with ease. Rey crouched down up to her neck in the water and tried to become invisible. The last person she wanted to see her in a bathing suit was Hux.

"The mall," said Ben, looking at Phasma.

She shrugged, her silver jacket gleaming in the light. "Hux likes a good haul. What do you want _me_ to do about it?"

Ben turned his glare back on Hux. "I'm not going with you to Millennium so you can steal more shit, Hux."

Rey was shocked. Hux was _rich_ , why the hell was he stealing? "Steal?" she blurted out, and wished she hadn't.

Phasma turned a lazy blue eye on her. "Yup. Don't worry, if he gets caught, _Daddy_ will save him." He voice had an edge of distaste, and Rey wondered why the hell she hung around with him if she hated him so much.

"You'd enjoy it, trash-picker," said Hux, sneering. "Might actually look nice for a change."

"Get off my property," said Ben. His back was to Rey, but his whole stance was tense. "Now."

Hux was ignoring him, his attention focused on Rey. "Maybe you'd like to come with us. I'm sure you've shoplifted plenty in your time. Foster kids always—"

Rey lurched out of the pool and stomped up the steps, shivering and dripping wet. "Fuck you," she spat, furious. "I've never stolen a thing in my life."

"Except our tax money," said Armitage, a cold gleam in his eyes. "Useless fucking mouth on you. At least you can sing. Although, I don't know—if you spent the night here, maybe Ren can tell us some other things your mouth can—"

Ben's right hook flashed out and caught Hux in the mouth, nearly knocking him double. "Get off. My. Property," he snarled.

Hux jerked upright and he touched his lip, furious at the sight of his own blood. "Fuck you," he snapped. "Looks like I'll be having Dad call up your precious mother and tell her all about the Armani coat you lifted—"

Rey understood immediately and stepped forward, blood boiling. "I can't imagine being so pathetic that I had to blackmail people to force them to hang out with me," she said. "Guess all that money can't buy you friends."

Armitage went even whiter than usual, two high spots of color blooming on his cheeks. Rey knew she'd hit a nerve. "I can't imagine being a filthy _orphan_ who—who—smells like _trash_ —"

Meh. She'd heard worse. "You must have a shitty imagination, _Armie,_ " she said evenly, and Phasma's eyes widened in shock behind Hux as Hux turned purple with rage. "There's a better nickname, right? Maybe everyone will love to hear th—"

Armitage was a head taller than her, and weighed a good forty pounds more. She was thin and undernourished, so it was very, very easy for him to snatch her by the upper arm and shove her into the deep end of the pool.

She hit the water with a smack and choked on a mouthful of it as it hit her in the face, chlorinated and burning, and thought, _I'm going to drown in a fucking pool_. Distantly she heard Ben screaming above her, "You fucking bastard, she can't _swim_ ," and she tried to kick up, but her next gasp for breath was just water, and she was under, and she was sinking, and there was a crashing, dull noise like a wave.

* * *

 

Her body didn't feel real. She couldn't breathe, and her vision was black. Hands dragging her across hard concrete, her back burning. Someone was shouting her name, and then she was being pulled upright like a rag doll and a fist was pounding her back and water was spilling out of her body, her throat contracting and burning and she was gagging, throwing up, coughing out water and water and more water.

"I'm calling the police," said a female, low voice, and Rey could hear another whining, high one, male and panicky, and the sounds of a scuffle.

"Rey," said another man's voice, low and urgent. "Rey. Breathe. Just try to breathe."

"She inhaled half the pool." That was the girl again. "She's alert, look. Her eyes are moving."

Rey cracked open one eye. The light was too bright—no, that was just the gleam off Phasma's silver bomber jacket. "Ouch," she croaked. The arms holding her were big and steady, and a hand was still pounding her back. She coughed up more warm water and yelped in pain, some of it feeling like it was inside her head, up her nose.

"Hold her forward." Phasma was all business, captain of the lacrosse team and well trained in first aid. "Ben, _forward_. Let her sinuses drain." Rey winced as Ben moved her and warm water tricked out of her nose. "Don't sniff," said Phasma. "You'll make it worse. Let it run. We have to keep her warm. Where are your towels?"

"Cabinet on the patio," said Ben, and Phasma was gone for a second and back again, draping a sun-warm, fluffy towel over Rey and tucking it around her.

The sound of sirens met their ears and Phasma looked up. "I'll handle it," she said firmly.

"G—Gwen," Rey managed, her throat hurting like fire and her voice almost gone. "Thanks."

Phasma—Gwen—hesitated, one hand on her shoulder. "Keep her warm and rub her arms," she instructed Ben, and squeezed Rey's shoulder quickly, as if to say, _you're welcome_ , before darting off across the lawn.

* * *

 

The police, led by a hulking blonde girl with shoulders like cannonballs, entered to find a ginger teenage boy, hog-tied on the back lawn with a cross-body bag strap and screeching about his civil rights, and another teenage boy the size of a grown man, soaking wet, stricken and clutching at a soaked girl wrapped in a towel who looked about fifteen years old and was spewing water all over the lawn. Since Ben and Phasma's accounts of the incident matched, and Rey croaked out a few agreeing words, they called paramedics (to the tune of Rey croaking _no, I don't have health insurance!_ ) and arrested Armitage Hux for assault and battery on the spot, dragging him into a car as he spat venom at the three of them.

Rey was loaded into the ambulance and spent the night at the hospital, treated for her scrapes and bruises, with an oxygen mask strapped to her face. Ben spent the night by her side in a chair, and when she woke up on Sunday, he was there, all six feet three inches of him, curled up and dozing.

"Hey," she rasped. Her throat was killing her.

He opened his eyes. "Hey," he said, sleepily.

She couldn't find the strength to say anything else, but he saw the question in her eyes and unfolded himself from the seat, leaning forward and pressing his hand to hers.

"Friends don't leave friends in the hospital overnight alone," he said.

She shut her eyes and felt tears track down into her ears, and squeezed his hand, hoping he knew she meant _thank you_.

* * *

 

Leia showed up that day, red-eyed and pale, to take her home.

It was all very dreamlike. Rey didn't remember any details about leaving. She was helped out of bed, changed into new clothes, told to not speak if she could help it, and released.

She remembered driving back in Leia's SUV, a strange man in the passenger seat, Ben driving behind them in his Nissan so closely that Leia kept muttering about brake-checking him.

She remembered getting out of the car at the Organa house and leaning on Leia as they went up the walk, Ben quickly coming to her other side to help. The strange man, speaking to Leia in low tones in the foyer. Rey lying down in the bed in the white room, Ben giving her lemon tea with honey and making her drink it before he took the cup away.

At some point, Ms. Holdo appeared in the doorway, looking stricken, and nearly in tears as she told Rey very, very gently that Paige Tico was going to be taking over the role of Christine for the play, and she was so sorry, so sorry about her voice, and what had happened.

Rey hadn't even been thinking about that, but her throat closed up and tears began to spill down her face. Paige, glowing on stage in her costumes, her pretty costumes that she had grown so fond of, that had made her feel beautiful.

"That's okay," she forced herself to tell Ms. Holdo, who looked shocked at the state of her voice. "I can still play flute."

* * *

 

Phasma turned herself in for petty theft and presented an armload of sunglasses and hats she'd lifted from the mall. She got off easy in the end—a fine and community service. The stolen coat Ben owned was taken back to the store in perfect, unworn condition, and the owner declined to call the police or make a report.

Not even being Brendol Hux's son could get Armitage off the assault charge. He was sentenced to thirty days in prison ("real prison, not that juvenile hall bullshit," said Phasma cheerfully) and ordered to pay Rey's hospital bills in full and another five thousand dollars for damages, and that was more money than Rey had ever dreamed of having in her life. Terrified at the thought of owning such immense wealth, she tried to give some to Mrs. Tico, who turned her down sternly and told her to save it for college, and to Ms. Dameron, who did the same thing after giving her an enormous, tearful hug.

Poe got quickly moved into the part of Raoul, since in addition to being incarcerated, Hux had been summarily expelled, and Ms. Holdo shoehorned another theater kid into the part of Monsieur Firmin.

Paige asked Rey to come to rehearsals anyway and help her with the blocking. Rey felt like maybe Paige was looking for an excuse to get her involved so she didn't feel so left out, but she came anyway, every other evening, to sit in the audience and give Paige written notes about where she was walking. She was still supposed to keep use of her vocal chords down to a minimum to give her throat time to heal, and everyone was very nice about it.

She stayed at the Organas' for the rest of her recovery, a steady stream of people marching in and out of the house after school and on weekends to hang out, sit with her, and do homework. Leia didn't mind in the slightest, and neither did the strange man—her brother Luke, Ben's uncle, as it turned out. Ben, half-shy of all these people in his house, lurked around in doorways until he got used to it.

* * *

 

"You know," said Leia amiably, dressed for opening night and rattling around in the kitchen. "Luke is a very good and highly esteemed professor of music."

Rey tilted her head. "Where?" she whispered. (She was allowed to whisper now, as long as she was careful.)

"Juilliard." Leia closed a drawer and smoothed down her gray satin jacket. "I've had him listen to some of your school performances, and he'd like to hear you play, if you're up to it."

Rey blinked at her. So Ben had been telling the truth. "Really?" she whispered.

"Yes. You may want to practice beforehand—I know you're still—"

"I'll do it," Rey said. "I'll—" Her throat tightened. "Thank you," she managed.

"Good. That's settled, then." Leia smiled. "Now let's go. We don't want to be late and get bad seats."

* * *

 

The musical went off perfectly. Rey watched as Paige performed perfectly, every step on point, dazzling in her dresses as she clung to Ben's hand—Rose and Paige worked so well together as Meg and Christine—Poe was a beautifully earnest Raoul—and then before she knew it, the play was over, and they were all taking their bows and the audience was cheering and clapping.

It was a blur after that—several people told Rey they were very sorry, and Rey shook her head and praised how well Paige had done, and Mrs. Tico appeared with three bouquets, two for her daughters and one for Rey ("it's the principle of the thing!" she insisted), and before Rey knew it she was back in Leia's SUV with Ben in the seat beside her, glowing from satisfaction at a job well done, but giving her small looks the entire way home.

"I think you did very well," said Luke, in his kind, slightly raspy voice. "Good form, good voice, good stage presence. Promising."

"Thanks," said Ben, and gave Rey a look. "I wish you could have seen Rey do it, though. She has a great voice."

 _Had_ , Rey thought dismally, and looked out the window. She'd never appreciated it, either. Maybe this was her punishment for being a scrappy little jerk.

"I'm sure she does." Luke smiled. "You haven't stopped talking about her the whole time I've been here."

Ben blushed. Rey hid a smile, the first one on her face in quite a few days. "Really," she whispered, raising an eyebrow at Ben.

"I—I just said you were good at music stuff," he said, half-stuttering. "You are."

"Uh-huh," said Leia, a smile in her voice. "Good at _music stuff_ , indeed."

" _Mo-om_ ," he hissed, and slumped down in his seat, arms crossed tightly as he looked out the window.

Rey smiled to herself and rested her hand on the middle seat, casually. Slowly, Ben moved his to rest beside hers, just their little fingers touching; and they stayed like that for the rest of the ride home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hux: the worst. person. ever


	9. Chapter 9

"Whenever you're ready," said Luke, waiting patiently in his seat in Leia's music room.

Rey straightened her back and counted in her head slightly, looking at her sheet music. She lifted the flute to her lips, her mouth curling in the familiar position, and began to play.

The soft, cheerful strains of "Concerning Hobbits" began to float out of her instrument, delicate and springy. She played and played and played, half from memory, lost in the music until the piece was over; then she lowered her arms and looked at Luke.

He regarded her with a carefully blank face. "You chose that piece?"

"Yes," she said.

"Play something from memory," he told her.

Rey frowned, thought for a moment, then settled on a Tchaikovsky piece she liked, and played it all the way through, embellishing slightly where she forgot the tune, and ending on a low, sweet note. Her throat still ached a little, but she controlled her breathing as best she could, pushing past the discomfort.

She lowered the flute and looked at him again.

"Very good," he said, stroking his beard. He considered something for a moment. "I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll write a letter of recommendation to the dean, and we'll see if we can't get you a scholarship. Fingers crossed for full-ride, not one of those fifty-fifty deals. How's that sound?"

Rey gaped at him, shocked. " _What_?" she croaked, and cleared her throat. "You mean it?" Talking again was taking some getting used to.

"Absolutely." He smiled warmly, and she could see Leia's warmth in his brown eyes. "Keep your grades up, kid, and don't stop playing. I look forward very much to having you in my classes."

* * *

 

It was the Ticos' night to have Rey over, and Mrs. Tico relented and let them order pizza, in honor of the finale performance of _Phantom_.

"I'm so excited," Paige gushed. "Rose, would you _stop_ texting Finn for three seconds?"

"It's um, about the _play_ , thank you very much," said Rose, crimson.

"Oh, sure." Paige sighed. "They got caught making out behind the curtain on Wednesday night," she whispered to Rey, looking around first to make sure her mother wasn't in hearing distance.

"Oh, my god," said Rey, grinning. "Soo? Dating? Yes? No?"

"I don't know!" Rose was still flushed to the ears. "Oh my god, you're worse than Paige! He's just so _nice_ and cute and sweet and—"

"I better not be hearing you talking about a boy," said the omnipresent voice of Mrs. Tico, floating out from the hallway.

"We're talking about Raoul in _Phantom_ ," Rey said quickly and loudly. "He's _so_ , uh, dreamy."

"Yeah," said Paige, smothering a giggle. "And the Phantom is a creep." She side-eyed Rey. "Rey likes the Phantom, though."

It was Rey's turn to go red in the face. "I do _not_. I—I—"

"What, like we haven't missed you and Ben reuniting after _every single show_." Rose batted her eyelashes and clutched her hands to her chest. "Ooh, _Ben_. I _hate_ you so much that I didn't even want to see you _ever again_ but now I _love_ you."

Rey covered her eyes, mortified. Paige laughed and shoved Rose. "He saved her from _drowning_. She's allowed to like him."

"You make it sound like I fell into the ocean," said Rey, still crimson. "It was a pool!"

"Pool, ocean, whatever. People can drown in a puddle." Rose patted her on the back. "Ben does like you, though."

"I know," said Rey, and shoved her fists under her legs. "Augh. I mean. We talked about it. But now that the show isn't—now that I'm not working with him it's just…awkward."

"Uh, you spend every weekend at his house," said Paige. "We thought you were dating."

"We're not!" Rey said loudly. "I mean. Not. Officially? We haven't talked about it. Yet. If we ever will. I don't think he's…into me like that."

"But it was on the table at, like, some point, right?" Rose put her fists under her chin. "Do tell."

Rey groaned and slid down onto her back. "Ughhhhh. Okay. Look. We kissed." Both girls let out a shocked noise. "I mean, no. We were practicing for the end of the play when Christine kisses the Phantom and he lets Raoul go, and then it turned into…you know, a _real_ kiss, and—and—" Rey didn't want to talk about what has transpired after. "But we didn't do much of anything beyond that," she finished lamely. "So I don't....really know."

"You have got to be kidding me." Paige clapped her hands to her hair. "Rey. _Rey_. He won't shut up about you. Ever. Every time the guy is backstage he's just _brooding_ , which, you know, helps with the whole Phantom thing—but seriously, you have got to talk to him." She shook her head. "He misses you. You guys had that…chemistry, you know, that thing on stage and—look, I don't want you to feel like I stole your place—"

"Never," said Rey, shocked. "My voice was shot for weeks. I only just this week started being able to sing again. You should have gotten the part in the first place—"

"But, like. He _worked_ with you. It's just. Not the same." Paige waved her hands around and took a bite of pizza.

"I can't talk to him about that," Rey said. "It's weird. It was the day before I almost drowned in his fu—" She sneaked a glance back at where Mrs. Tico had been. "—freaking pool. How am I supposed to pick that up? 'Oh hey, Ben, long time no talk but we should talk about that thing we did before I almost died because I want to make out with you again,' like…what?"

"That's exactly how you pick it up," said Rose, grinning.

"Ugh," said Rey.

"Quick, totally random question," said Paige, her eyes slightly narrowed. "You remember all the blocking, right?"

"Uh, yeah," said Rey suspiciously. "Why?"

"No reason," she said. "Just wondering. Okay, let's get back to homework before my mom kills us. What's the Pythagorean theorem again?"

* * *

 

Rey looked down at her phone Friday afternoon in the parking lot and sighed. The text was from Leia. _So sorry, can't pick you up this afternoon. Do you mind staying at school until the performance tonight is over?_

 _Sure, no problem,_ she texted back, and shuffled into the auditorium, more out of force of habit than anything else. She felt like a ghost, a strange, waifish little thing that didn't belong in the place anymore. Something in the shadows, something in the dark.

"Rey!" said Ms. Holdo as she drifted into the halls backstage. "There you are. Could you sit in on this one last rehearsal again? I want to make sure Paige gets everything down pat. She's been a little stiff in some scenes."

"Sure," Rey said amiably, and headed out to the auditorium, empty and silent and huge. She slid into her seat and watched them lower the lights over the set stage, actually enjoying herself slightly as she was left in shadow. Weird, because she was sure they were finished with rehearsals, but—

The lights all came up at once and Rey blinked in shock as the entire cast, her friends, and Ms. Holdo were revealed on stage, facing her, and shouted, " _Surprise!_ "

"What?" she blurted out, stunned.

Rose stepped forward and beckoned to her. "We said surprise! Get up here! You're doing the last show."

"I'm _what_?"

"You. Are. Doing. The. Last. Show." Paige grinned. "I've sworn I'm not touching any of those costumes for the rest of my whole life, so you're just going to have to do Christine."

Rey just sat there, her mouth hanging open.

Rose turned to Ben and put her fists on her hips. "Will you _please_ go get your not-girlfriend up here already?"

His large ears turned bright red and he climbed off the stage, making a beeline for her.

It wasn't until Ben reached her seat and helped her up that Rey finally burst into tears, and once she made it to the stage she was hugged by everyone and whisked instantly backstage to change in a hurricane of talking and excited directions.

"We all agreed," said Ms. Holdo sternly, poking her head into the makeup area. "Even Leia was in on it. Now, I don't care if you go out there and squawk your way through the whole thing. Nobody is going to care. If they do, they don't matter. You deserve at least one night on this stage, and you're going to get it."

Rey tried very hard to stop crying. Her makeup was smearing. "Thank you," she managed.

"Break a leg." Ms. Holdo smiled. "And whatever you do, remember the blocking."

* * *

 

Rey hurried to her position in her slave girl costume. They had about twenty minutes until the curtain went up, and she could hear the murmur of the audience buzzing dimly, like bees in a hive. "Hey," she whispered to Paige and Rose as she knelt down. Her heart was pounding.

"Hey!" Paige grinned. "You have no idea how excited I am to do Carlotta. You're gonna kill it."

"I'll kill something," Rey said dismally, and crunched down on the honey cough drop in her mouth. "I can't believe you guys did this."

"It was Ben's idea." Rose clapped her hand over her mouth. "I…wasn't supposed to say that."

"Thanks," said a voice dryly, and Rey turned to see Ben in full costume. He squatted down beside her. "You all right?"

"Nervous as hell," Rey confessed.

"You're going to do great. I know you are." He smiled and took her hand. "Don't be afraid."

They were interrupted by Finn sneaking over and planting a big kiss on Rose. "Break a leg, babe," he said to her, and winked at Rey before dashing back off to the other side. Rose blushed to her throat and mumbled something about _boys._

"Anyway," said Ben. "You'll do great. Don't be scared, all that stuff."

"Kiss for luck?" Rey asked, one eyebrow up. Her heart was still thumping a million miles an hour, but this time it wasn't because of the stage fright.

He smiled, a real, full smile, and cupped her cheek. "I thought you'd never ask," he said, and kissed her full on the mouth and oh, how could she ever have thought he didn't like her? Rey felt almost dizzy as he moved away, and barely heard the _ooh_ s from the chorus girls and the soft _"Yesss_ " from Rose. "Now get out there and kick ass."

"You got it," she said, and quickly sneaked one more kiss in before he had to retreat back into the shadows.

"One minute," hissed a stagehand, holding a clipboard and dressed in black.

Rey took Rose's hand and a deep breath, calming her pulse as the faint sounds of the opening scene met her ears, the auction: the lots and the gavel banging and the last, arresting cry of _GENTLEMEN!_

The curtain rose.

She was standing in the light.


End file.
